


Water and Fire

by UnderZeWeather



Series: AU Jam [9]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Familiars, Keith is a gay disaster, Lance is a dork, M/M, Magic, Selkie Lance (Voltron), Witch AU, Witch Keith (Voltron), Witch Shiro (Voltron), phoenix Adam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 41,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderZeWeather/pseuds/UnderZeWeather
Summary: Keith is witch that has just come of age. What does this mean? Why, he can finally summon his own familiar of course! Keith's magic comes from fire so he's expecting to summon either a magical creature that comes from fire, or some kind of animal that likes heat. Though he is hoping for a wolf... He didn't expect to summon a selkie...
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: AU Jam [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1893274
Comments: 16
Kudos: 114





	1. Summoning

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in Strawberry and Blueberry Jam under Witch AU. In this AU I used the ye old English spelling of witch because it's apparently a gender neutral spelling or something like that. idk. I honestly didn't look too much into it. Anyway, kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

Today was a very special day for Keith. It was the day every young wicche dreamed of. He had finished his final studies, earned his title, and would be sent out to work with his familiar. The animal that would help him with his job. Keith had high hopes for his familiar. He hoped for a wolf or a panther, but if he could summon some high ranking magical creature he hoped for a dragon. That would really help the young fire wicche out.

The young wicche waited patiently outside the summoning room with other wicche’s. They were all waiting for their names to be called so they could enter the room and summon their familiar. Keith was excited. He watched as the other wicche’s walked out with toads, owls, and cats. A few people came out with slightly more absurd familiars like emus, turtles, and someone ended up with a banana slug. He kind of hoped that he didn’t get a banana slug.

A girl exited the summoning room with an excitable looking terrier happily running around her legs. The region’s head wicche, Takashi Shirogane, followed behind her with a scroll in his hands. He easily spotted Keith in the crowd and smiled at him, not even needed to unroll the scroll to know he was next. 

“Keith Kogane.” He called. Keith quickly made his way through the small crowd and followed Shiro into the room. Behind closed doors, Shiro chuckled and patted his head. “I can’t believe it. You’re already an adult. It feels like just yesterday when you were setting your pinky on fire when there weren’t any candles to light.”

Keith rolled his eyes and playfully jabbed Shiro in the ribcage. “Well now I am a full fledged wicche… Well, once I get my familiar…”

Shiro nodded his head in agreement as they made it into the summoning room. “Yep. Well, time to get started.” 

The summoning room was large and circular with a high ceiling with a glass dome. On the ground were engravings that ensured that this room was always made for summoning familiars. Shiro’s familiar, a phoenix called Adam, pecked at the ground until he saw Shiro. At which point he flew to his master and landed on his enchanted arm made of petrified wood and stone.

“Remember the spell?” He asked Keith as he walked away from the circle.

“Of course.” Said Keith as he rolled up his sleeves. “Just give me a moment to clear my head.” Shiro shrugged and happily gestured for him to continue. Keith cracked his knuckles and cleared his head. “Fire, air, water, and earth. I call upon you to bring them forth. Light, ice, storm and night. A path to me I do invite.” 

The summoning circle started to glow softly as the red energy of his manna poured into the circle causing it to glow red too. Keith closed his eyes and let his emotional defences drop. Something he hated doing, but it was important for finding the right familiar. Pouring your manna into a summoning circle was like throwing out an advertisement to the magical world and seeing who will take up the task. The better your manna the more impressive the magical creatures would try and take the job.

However, a pathetic looking familiar didn’t mean the wicche was weak or anything. A wicche’s manna could improve a lot over years. Some of the most powerful wicche’s in the land had creatures like toads and tarantulas as familiars. But having an impressive familiar right off the bat was always prefered for obvious reasons.

After a few seconds of the summoning circle glowing red with his manna, it started to flicker with different shades. It flickered orange and purple a few times, even green. This was a good sign. It meant that there were a few creatures out there that liked the look of his manna. Suddenly a wave of blue washed over the circle and an orb of light appeared in the center of the circle.

Seconds later there was a loud plop sound as Keith’s familiar manifested in front of him. It took Keith a few seconds to figure out what he was looking at. It was big and round with a dog’s face and flippers. 

“... Shiro… Why the fuck is my familiar a leopard seal?” Asked Keith.

The older wicche snickered as they summoned a small wagon and ramp for Keith to move his familiar around with. “Don’t ask me. These things happen. I thought for sure I was going to get some kind of storm hawk, but I ended up with Adam instead. The old magic works in mysterious ways.” He reached over and gently scratched under his familiar’s chin, which the bird seemed to enjoy. “Now bestow your familiar with the gift sentiants.” 

Keith sighed in mild annoyance, but walked up to the confused looking blue eyed seal. “Bless your heart with magic light I give the gift of wicche’s tongue.”

The seal blinked a few times and him before snorting sea water at him. The seal then waddled up the ramp and onto the wagon and looked over at Keith, snorting again.

“... Did it work?” Asked Keith.

Shiro shrugged. “It can take a little while for the magic to work. Just take your familiar outside to the gardens. Everyone else is out there getting to know their familiars.”

Keith nodded and started to drag his familiar outside. He had planned for all eventualities except for this… He didn’t think he would get an aquatic animal. He was planning to go to the mountains but how the hell was he going to do this with a seal? How the hell was he going to get his seal home in the first place? He lived on a hill.

He walked towards the pond and sat down with the seal. They were meant to talk or something, right? The seal seemed very interested in everything that was happening around them. They watched the birds and the dogs and cats doing stuff.

Keith cleared his throat to catch their attention. “So… I am Keith. I’m your Master. I am a fire wicche. My official title is lesser arcane weapons master… I guess I should name you? Are you male or female? I can give you a gender neutral name if you like?”

The seal suddenly sat up and their fur started to shiver like they had goosebumps. They sat back and opened their mouth wide. All the fur on the seal’s body became loose and flopped off like a second skin until sitting on the wagon was a naked man with tanned skin. The only thing covering his body was the seal skin. He was handsome and had a playful smirk on his face.

“I’m not a lesser magical creature. I already have a name.” They said. “The name is Lance. I’m a selkie. It’s nice to meet you, Lesser arcane weapons master Keith, my Master.”

Keith was stunned to say the least. At least now he didn’t have to worry about dragging a honking huge seal up a hill to his house anymore.

***

An hour after the last wicche summoned their familiar, everyone was allowed to travel home. Shiro came out to find Keith and was surprised to see that the seal was actually a selkie. He laughed it off and congratulated the two of them for coming together and told them to get along well. Adam squawked in approval.

The two of them started the long walk home. Keith had asked if Lance wanted some clothes or if he wanted to turn back into a seal so he could wheel him back most of the way. Lance brushed it off and said he wanted to walk on two legs for a while. He just tied his seal skin around his hips and happily followed him.

“I haven’t been this far inland before.” Said Lance as they traveled along the cobblestone path near the Lakewood forest. “I usually stick to the coast. Lots of sand and what not… Wait, does this mean there’s no fish this far in land?”

Keith shook his head. “We have a lake nearby that has a lot of fish you might like?”

“Oh cool. Thanks.” 

Eventually they walked off the stone path and walked along a dirt path towards a small hill. On top of the hill was Keith’s home. It was big enough for two people and made of stone and wood. It wasn’t much, but it was his home.

“Is this where you live, Master?” Asked Lance.

“Where we live.” Corrected Keith. He wasn’t too sure how he felt about a higher magical creature like Lance calling him Master. “Um… I don’t know too much about selkie’s apart from you guys live in the sea… So…”

Lance chuckled. “That’s fine. I don’t know too much about wicche’s either.” They went inside and Lance sat down at a table. “So what does a lesser arcane weapons master do, master?”

Keith frowned and went about starting a fire to make some tea. “I make spells and enchantments to enhance weapons. Mostly small things like daggers and arrows at the moment since I am a lesser wicche. But who knows? After a few years if my work quality is good I could make some interesting things…” His eyes suddenly lit up. “I could start using sea glass… Since you’re a selkie and everything.”

“You could.”

“Yeah. What things do I need to know about selkies?”

Lance shrugged. “We’re pretty low maintenance for the most part. We like being damp, love eating fish and seafood… Oh Master, there is one very important thing you need to know about selkies.”

“Yes?”

Lance reached down and ran his fingers over his fur. “... You can’t take my fur. Ever. If I hide it somewhere for whatever reason, you can’t move it unless it’s going to get destroyed. Okay? We don’t like people touching our furs.”

Keith shrugged. He was okay with Lance setting some boundaries. He was a high level magical creature after all. Plus over the next few days he would look up how best to take care of a selkie. He assumed he might need a lot more water. Not something he ever thought he would need in abundance since his manna was linked to the element of fire. Not water. Still unsure why a selkie would even want to be the familiar to a fire wicche anyway.

He grabbed some herbs and heard a plop as something hit the ground behind him. Keith jumped and quickly turned to see that Lance had decided to pull his seal skin back on. He watched as Lance plopped along the ground towards a bed of hay in the corner that had a soft sheepskin blanket over it. He looked over at Keith and raised an eyebrow.

“Go ahead.” Said Keith. “That’s your bed for tonight. We can figure out something a little more comfortable for you tomorrow.”

Lance huffed in agreement and happily flopped onto his hay and wool bed. He yawned and closed his eyes. He seemed happy enough to be here. Keith was still more than a little confused. Something from the sea shouldn’t have been attracted to his manna when he called out for a familiar. He’d figure this out later. Lance seemed to have the right idea about sleeping. Keith would probably go ahead and do that too after he drank some tea.


	2. Blacksmith

Keith snuggled into his blanket as he attempted to ignore the morning light coming through the window. He could be pretty lazy when he wanted to be. He didn’t have any jobs to do today so he could sleep in.

_Plop_

He frowned a little at the sound. That was an unfamiliar sound. He wondered what on earth it could have been as he went through his mind of familiar sounds… Familiar… That was right, he went and got his familiar yesterday. A selkie named Lance.

_Plop, plop, plop_

Keith opened his eyes and looked down from his loft to see Lance very slowly making his way around the bottom floor in his seal form. They lazily flopped along the ground, seemingly pleased and or amused with the sound his body made when it slapped against the paved ground near the hearth. The selkie poked their flipper into the ashes of the fire and tasted it. They pulled a face and made an annoyed noise.

“Are you okay there?” Asked Keith.

Lance looked up at Keith and took off his seal skin. “Morning Master. Just thought I’d look around a little. That’s all. What’s that stuff?”

“... You haven’t been around fire much have you?”

“Nope.”

Keith climbed down from his loft and grabbed a few logs in a basket, tossed them into a fireplace, and drew a line across them. Hot red flames burst from where he touched. It was simple magic that every fire wicche knew. Lance watched in stunned awe and started clapping. 

“Amazing master!” Said Lance. “Oh, it’s warm!”

“Yeah, don’t touch it though. You’ll get burnt… Stay here while I go and get some water.” Keith left Lance for a moment to go down and grab some water from the well at the foot of the hill. When he came back up Lance was watching the fire. Keith poured some water into a pot and put it over the fire. “Are you having fun there?”

Lance nodded. “I haven’t seen fire before… Well I have, but not this close. I haven’t really been on land much.”

“Oh yeah?” Asked Keith as he started to get breakfast ready for the both of them.

“Yeah.” Lance picked up a fire poker and poked one of the logs. “There are a few breeding islands that we selkies use… Males don’t usually come onto land unless it’s to breed. Females are much more adventurous and go wherever they want.”

“... Huh is that so?” Keith cracked a few eggs into a pan and quickly scrambled them. “Then why did you answer my call to become my familiar? You don’t seem like someone that would willingly become tied to a wicche.”

Lance shrugged. “I got curious. The sea has many interesting things, but I know pretty much nothing about land… We have a lot of horror stories about land creatures and what they do to selkies… So I thought that maybe when I heard your manna reaching out that I might answer the call because you were looking for someone for something other than the things I’ve heard humans do to selkies.”

“Okay?” He cut a thick slice of crusty bread off for the both of them and presented Lance with his breakfast. “Here. Today we’ll go down to the village and find you something appropriate to eat. You should be fine with bread and eggs for now.”

“Oh! Eggs are nice. If we’re quick we can grab one or two from some seabirds before they get mad and swoop at us.” 

“Well, these are cooked. So make of that what you will.”

Lance smiled and happily ate his food. He remarked a few times about the odd texture and taste, but over all he seemed to like it. Once he had finished Lance pulled his seal skin back on and climbed back into the wagon.

Keith rolled his eyes and finished his tea. “Yeah, yeah. We’re taking the wagon. But you are going to have to walk back. Okay?” Lance nodded in agreement and Keith quickly changed into his dark red day robes and started the walk to the village.

Every now and then he would look over his shoulder to see what Lance was doing. The blue eyed selkie seemed to be interested in absolutely everything; trees, rocks, flowers, insects, leaves, everything. 

When they got to the village the locals were kind of surprised to see Keith walking around with a seal. Now, the villagers were used to seeing various witches with their familiars around considering they were so close to the regions so called “magic collective”. It was just a series of buildings for wicches; library of spells, apothecary, potions lab, armoury, and a small school for younglings. Which was where Keith learned magic. It was all funded by the royal family as long as all wicche’s swore loyalty to the crown.

They rolled into the meat markets and looked down at Lance. “Okay. There isn’t a lot of fish around here, but if there is anything you’re interested in just let me know. I need to get some meat for dinner anyway.”

Keith looked around at one of the cheaper meat stalls. They sold chickens and some lamb. Keith paid the man two bronze coins for a chicken leg and a slice of lamb. He offered both to Lance to see what he would prefer. The selkie sniffed the lamb and pulled a face. Even stuck his tongue out at it and made a disgusted noise. He ate the chicken leg though.

“Alright. Glad you like cheaper meat. Get out of the wagon.” Said Keith. Lance huffed at the indignity of it all and flopped onto the ground while Keith bought a few chickens and a lumb of lamb. 

After that the two of them walked down to the blacksmith. Though it was more like Keith walked five steps and then waited for Lance to catch up to him. After the third time that Keith had to stop for him to catch up Lance took off his seal skin and tied it around his hips.

“Man, this sucks. Why do land creatures have to do so much walking.”

“Because we can’t swim on land.”

“Oh well aren’t you a smart ass, Master.”

Keith frowned at him. “Can you even call me a smart ass? Like, as my familiar?”

Lance shrugged. “I kind of just did. Maybe it’s because I’m a higher magical creature?”

“Maybe.”

“Anyway, where are we going, Master?”

“The blacksmith. I’m going to see if he has some daggers or blades for me to practice enchantments.”

Lance’s eyes lit up in excitement. “Oh? Really? That sounds so cool.”

“It’s pretty basic magic.” They made it to the blacksmith’s and Keith called out. “Kolivan! You in?”

A hulking great man who had his hair tied in a long braid looked up at the young wicche as he dunked something into a barrel of water. Steam billowed everywhere. Keith heard Lance gasp in shock behind him. It was kind of cute.

“Morning Keith.” Said Kolivan calmly. “What can I do for you?”

“Any failed knives?”

“You’re lucky you came by now.” Said the older man. He gestured to a bucket. “I’m running low on iron and was going to melt them down. Three bronze for three or a silver for five.”

Keith placed a silver on the table and went to look through the knife bucket. As he looked through it Lance was more than happy to have a conversation with Kolivan. Which Keith knew it was going to be amusing since Kolivan was very stoic.

“Hi! I’m Lance!” Said the selkie in an enthusiastic manner.

“Um hello? I’m Kolivan… Why are you naked?”

“I’m not naked I’m wearing my seal skin.” Huffed Lance. “I’m a selkie. Master Keith’s familiar.”

“A selkie?” Kolivan frowned a little and had a good look at Lance. “I see… Well I guess that explains the seal skin?”

“Yeah. I usually look like this.” Lance pulled his seal skin back on and happily plopped onto the ground. He grinned up at Kolivan and happily slapped his own belly a few times.

Kolivan seemed confused and looked over at Keith. “So this is your familiar? I am… I am surprised you managed to summon an aquatic familiar… At least you didn’t summon a fish.”

“Yeah, a fish would have been pretty bad.” Keith found the knives he wanted and tossed them into the wagon. “Well in the eyes of other wicche’s I’m officially an adult.”

Kolivan nodded approvingly. “Congratulations… Come back in a week and I’ll have something for you.” 

“Okay. See you later Kolivan. Come along Lance. We’re heading home.” 

Lance rolled onto his back and huffed a few times before he rolled back onto his stomach and took his seal skin off again. “Okay Master.”

As they walked back everyone seemed to give them more weird looks. Well, they gave Lance weird looks. Everyone was fine with an animal from walking with a wicche, just not a half naked man wearing essentially a seal skin skirt.

When they got back to the forest and headed down the dirt path back to the house Lance happily started to talk. “So… Big question.” 

“Yeah?”

“What exactly is a familiar?”

Keith froze for a moment. “Wait, you don’t know what a familiar is?”

“Nope.”

“... You decided to be my familiar without knowing what it is?”

“I am not a very smart selkie.”

“Apparently so.”

Keith shook his head. “A familiar is a helper to a wicche. The wicche provides food and shelter for their familiar and keeps them safe. In return the familiar gathers things the wicche asks for and makes sure they can continue their work.”

Lance hummed a little and tilted his head. “So… I go and do stuff for you and you give me food and shelter?”

“That’s the basic gist of it.” Said Keith. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to do anything crazy. If anything I’ll probably just ask you to go and get knives from Kolivan and a few different supplies from the town.”

Lance nodded. “Alright. Sounds interesting.”

“Yeah… By the way, can you like, wear pants when you’re wearing your seal skin? It would make your change between seal and human a lot easier.”

“Wouldn’t know. Never tried that before.”

Keith hummed a little and scratched his chin. “Huh… Well I have a pair of tights you can try on to see if it works… If they get messed up then that’s no big deal. They are old. If it works we can talk about getting you some better clothes.”

“Aw, thanks Master.”

“You know, you can just call me Keith. Feels kind of weird hearing a higher magical being calling me Master.”

“Okay Keith.”

When they got back to their house Keith hung up the meat and set the wonky knives down on his work bench. He tried to use his manna to cast arcane magic on weapons every day to keep his skills sharp. He picked up his sigil tile and grabbed a few different powders. Once he had everything set up he looked over at Lance.

“So, do you want to watch me work?”

Lance nodded eagerly as he leaned against the workbench. “Yeah. What does your job entail anyway?”

“I fuse elements into weapons.” Said Keith. “I channel my manna and use different powders and tools to manipulate my manna into different elemental powers. Since I am a fire wicche I prefer to use fire elements or derivatives of fire like lightning and light, and clay or metal, but I can do all the elements.”

Lance hummed a little and crouched down so his nose was level with the workbench. “I see… So… Can you infuse one of those knives with… Fire?”

“Really?”

Lance pouted. “Well you’re a fire wicche. I wanna see you using your fire to make something really cool.”

Keith shrugged and picked up the tile. He let his manna flow and manifest into the tip of his index finger and started to draw the elemental sidgle for fire on it. Once that was done he put one of the wonky knives on it and started to look through his powders. He found a bottle of crushed red tarantula legs and a bottle of blood dust.

“... What that?” Asked Lance.

“Tarantula legs and blood dust.” Said Keith. “Helps the manna bond to it.” He lightly coated the two of them with a dusting of both powders. “Trantilar legs to cause the wound to itch and blister. Blood dust to make clotting difficult.”

“... Sounds painful.”

“To be fair I usually just make things with blood dust since they are mostly meant to be weapons for soldiers and assassins. Anyway, back to work.” He held his hands over the knife and let his manna flow out and into the sidgle. 

It wasn’t as easy as just saying a spell. Keith had to visualise the manna flowing from the sigil and into the metal. He had to think of where it would end up, where the manna would be strongest. He used to be terrible at this, but with some guidance from Shiro and Kolivan he had gotten pretty good at it.

When Keith was satisfied he stopped the flow of manna and the sigil turned to ash. Easy enough to wipe away. He picked up the wonky blade and held it up for Lance to look at. “Here. Your fire element infused knife. It’s as sharp as an egg, but it’s a good practice piece.”

Lance took the knife and sat on the floor, looking it over. “Oh… It’s warm.”

“Yeah. It’s just been infused with fire. It’s going to be warm.”

Lance smiled to himself as he turned the metal in his hand. “It’s very nice. Can I keep it?”

“Sure.” Keith frowned a little and leaned close to Lance and noticed his skin seemed a little flaky. “... You need water, right? You look a little dry…”

“... Now that you mention it, I am a little parched…”

Keith gestured outside. “Go down to the river and have a swim. Since you’re a selkie you should probably try and stay wet.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Lance got up and happily headed outside. Seconds later Keith heard a very loud whumping sound getting further and further away. Keith looked out the window just in time to see Lance, now in seal form, roll down the hill and into the water with a loud splash. Keith snorted and rolled his eyes. He was going to have to head to the library to look up selkies.


	3. Library

Going to the library wasn’t a big deal for Keith. What was a bit of a big deal was the fact that Lance decided it would be a good idea to see how good the acoustics in the library was by slapping his damn flippers around on the stone. Some of the other wicche’s gave him looks. Lance just rolled his eyes and decided to politely tell them to fuck off in seal. 

The echo was enough to make everyone jump, including Lance. Keith quickly turned around and quietly hissed at him. “Lance, this is a library. You’re meant to be quiet. Okay? No demonic seal screams. Go it?” Lance rolled his eyes. “... If you’re uninterested there’s a pond outside you can soak in.”

Lance huffed and flopped his way outside. He did his best to slap his fins and body against the ground as hard as he could until he was outside. Once he was outside he quickly spotted the water and happily flopped his way over until he fell in with a splash.

Fresh water felt nice against his skin. It was different from the salt water he was used to and he was pretty sure he was drying out less when he was on land. He happily poked his head out of the water and bobbed around a little.

He looked up and watched a few other wicches walking by. He saw Shiro walking towards the library with his phoenix perched on his shoulder. Lance grinned and let out a loud bark to catch their attention. The wicche and their familiar paused in shock and quickly looked at Lance before looking at each other. The phoenix took a scroll from Shiro and flew into the library while Shiro walked over to him.

“... Lance, right?” He asked. “Keith’s familiar?”

Lance nodded and pulled himself out of the water, wrapping it around himself. “Yeah! Your name is Shiro, right?”

Shiro nodded and sat on a rock close to Lance. “Yeah. I am. So what are you doing here? Just exploring or is Keith here?”

The selkie pointed to the library. “He’s in there. Said he was going to look up selkie stuff. Which is nice.”

“Yeah, how are you fairing living on land?”

“I’m doing pretty well.” Said Lance. “I kind of miss eating krill, squid and fish… Sometimes penguins… Those guys were nice. They actually kind of taste like the chicken that Keith bought for me to eat.”

“That’s good… I’m still surprised you got summoned by a fire wicche. I thought high magical creatures could resist the pull of a summoning?”

Lance shrugged. “I just wanted to see what life on land was like… We aren’t normally allowed to come on land where humans are for any reason not since… But I got curious. There’s so many interesting things up here. Like fire. I still find that interesting.” He slapped the ground and looked up at him. “Did you know that Keith can grab stuff out of the fire and not burn himself?”

“That’s the wicche’s gift.” 

“What’s that?”

Shiro looked slightly surprised for a moment. “Oh that’s right, you probably wouldn’t know… So we wicche’s get our power from the Goddess Allura. Allura gifted humans with magic and blessed us with the ability to control the elements. Depending on what element a wicche has been blessed with means they have been given different gifts. Since Keith is a fire wicche he has been blessed with the gift of being fireproof.”

“Oh! That’s so cool!” Said Lance excitedly. “What other gifts do other wicche’s have?”

Shiro hummed a little and thought this over. “Well, I’m a light wicche. I can naturally refract and manipulate waves of light to make myself and other things invisible. Water wicche’s can’t drown. Dark wicche’s have night vision. Wind wicche’s can hover and fly for short distances. Nature wicche’s manipulate plants.”

“That’s so cool.”

Shiro chuckled. “Yeah. We can also overlap our magic and can kind of perform different kinds of magic that’s a little more complicated. Like, a wind and water wicche can study each other’s magic and become lightning wicche’s. Nature and fire wicches’s can become earth wicche’s.”

“Oh! That’s so cool!” Lance happily grinned as he clutched at his seal fur. “Keith talked to me a bit about that stuff when he was showing me how he did his job. It was really, really cool!”

“That’s nice. Keith’s been really dedicated to his craft for years. I’m really proud of how he’s handled everything.”

Lance smiled and lightly splashed the water with his feet. “This water is really nice. Not very salty at all.”

“No it isn’t. That’s freshwater for you.”

Lance hummed softly and continued to kick at the water. “Yeah. It’s nice. I like it… Keith is a good wicche.”

“He is.”

***

Keith had found several scrolls and a few books on the subject of selkies. Many believed that selikes were only females that needed human males to have children. Which turned out to be a lie as there had been sightings of male selkies in later years. There wasn’t much about how to keep one happy besides keeping them away from water and to keep their furs locked away at all times.

Which was kind of weird. Lance didn’t say anything about that kind of stuff. He read a lot of selkie accounts from sailors and people from fishing villages. It was mainly stuff about mysterious women showing up and living with the once romanceless fishermen. Sometimes they would vanish just as quickly as they showed up.

He found a particularly interesting and disturbing report written by a rather famous water wicche, Blaytz. He was hailed as being a master of water. He could calm a raging sea or cause a tsunami to wipe out an entire island. There was a small island far off on the North coast where the villagers were convinced that their woman were being enchanted by some kind of sirens or sea monsters because they were all committing suicide by jumping off a cliff into the sea on mass.

It was pretty chilling stuff, but in less than a week Blaytz had figured out that this was originally a breeding island for selkies and fishermen had come there to take selkie brides. In the beginning it was okay and their relationships might have been out of love, but selkies being selkes would always pull their seal skins on and return to the ocean. To stop this, their human husbands burned their seal skins. The selkies, unable to return to the ocean, became extremely depressed and ended their lives rather than staying on land forever.

Blaytz ended the report by saying the island no longer exists and a new island is in its place surrounded by coral and rocks that will destroy any and every boat that tries to get close to it. A somewhat happy ending, kind of… Well it explained why Lance mentioned that he didn’t want Keith to touch his seal fur.

He sighed a little and rubbed his face. So it seemed like when he was in human form he could just treat Lance like a human? When he was a seal… He still wasn’t sure what the hell he was meant to do when Lance was a seal.

He heard a slight whoosh noise and looked up to see Adam drop a scroll off at the front desk before he quickly dived towards Keith. There was a quick flurry of feathers, fire, and robes as Adam changed into his human form.

“Good day Keith.” He said with a smile. “What might you be doing here?”

“Looking up stuff about selkies.” Said Keith. “Not a lot about them though…”

“Higher magical creatures are like that.” Said Adam. “For example, no one really knows much about my kind apart from the fact we catch on fire when we die and are reborn from the ashes. He almost had a smug look on his face when he said that. Phoenix were more proud than a peacock.

“Well, what are you doing here?” Asked Keith.

“Oh, Shiro asked me to return a scroll while he went to talk to Lance.”

“... Is Lance causing trouble?”

“Nah, he’s just enjoying the pond out the front.” Said Adam. “Probably annoying the freshwater and all that. A huge change from the salt water he’s used to.”

“Probably.”

Adam leaned over Keith’s shoulder and looked at the scrolls. “So find anything interesting on selkies?”

“Just that if you take their furs they can’t turn back into a seal… And they get extremely depressed if they can’t go back into the ocean.” He frowned a little. “Does this mean we have to go down to the coast? I hate the ocean…”

Adam chuckled. “Perhaps. Should be interesting to see you trying to swim again.”

“No, fuck that. I’m not swimming again.” Grumbled Keith. “Fucking hate that.” Swimming was the worst. Keith sunk like a rock. He blamed being a fire wicche for that. He concluded that water naturally hated him and was going to drown him the first chance it got. Fuck water. Fuck the ocean. It was a place of evil as far as he was concerned.

Adam just grinned and shook his head. “Well you’re going to have to get used to it. Shiro had to get used to getting me volcanic rocks every year or so for my nest.”

Keith sighed a little and shook his head. “Yeah well… If I can avoid going to the ocean for a while I will… But if they have to for his sake I will…”

“Good. Are you done studying yet?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t a very… I didn’t really get what I wanted.”

“What were you after?”

“I wanted to try and make Lance’s living space a little more comfortable. Like, do I need to think about digging a ditch to fill with water for him to sleep in?”

“Possibly Have you considered asking him?”

Keith didn’t want to admit it, but Adam was right. Though it did feel kind of like a slap in the face admitting that he didn’t know how to to take care of his familiar. It was a rough jab at a wicche’s abilities. Keith wasn’t going to admit he was a bad wicche.

“I will ask him later. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Keith returned the scrolls and headed out to see Lance, still in seal form, getting many pats from Shiro. Lance seemed to love the attention. When he spotted Keith he made a few happy seal noises and took his seal skin off.

“Hey Keith!” Said Lance with a grin. “Did you get what you need?”

“Pretty much. Hi Shiro.”

“Hey Keith.” Shiro smiled at him. “Do you and Lance want to come over for dinner tonight?”

“Sure. Sounds fun. Adam’s cooking right?”

Shiro pouted. “Why must you insult my cooking?”

“Because it’s trash and you should feel bad about it.” Said Keith. Adam and Lance lightly snickered while Shiro continued to pout.


	4. Dinner

The home of the regional wicche was quite grand compared to the more humble homes of the other wicches. It made sense. He was very important to the royal family. Shiro controlled and oversaw everything that had to do with magic in their region. Shiro’s tower was pretty much in the center of all the other magic related buildings in their area.

Walking up the stairs was usually fine for Keith, but he didn’t think that it would be such a struggle for Lance. The selkie had only made it up one flight of stairs before he had to take a pause, citing altitude sickness.

“So high up…”

“It’s not that high.” Said Keith. “We only have one more flight of stairs to go.”

Lance sat on the stairs and panted. “I hate it… Carry me!”

“No way. You’re too fat.”

“... I’m not fat! I am the perfect weight for a leopard seal!” Lance continued on his tirade as Keith ignored him and walked up the last flight of stairs to Shiro’s living quarters. The light wicche answered the door looking mildly concerned.

“What’s that sound?” He asked.

“What sound? Asked Keith.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”

“That.”

“Oh, that’s just Lance. He doesn’t like stairs.” Said Keith. “He has to use his human legs. He’s not a fan of that.”

“I see… Is he um… Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah. He’s just whining for the sake of it.” He looked down the stairs and called out. “You done bitching yet?!”

“NO!” Yelled Lance.

Keith rolled his eyes. “He’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“Okay… Well he better get here soon. I ended up buying a large piece of tuna for-”

There were several loud thumpings as Lance raced up the stairs. “Tuna? Like, from the ocean? The sea? Tuna?”

Shiro chuckled. “Yep. Right out of the ocean.” Lance was starting to drool. “Would you like some?”

“Yes. Yes I would.” Said Lance. “I love fish so much! It tastes so good!”

Keith just shook his head and walked into Shiro’s home with Lance quickly following him. He was sniffing the air and looking out for the tuna. He found it in the kitchen and went to grab it when Adam swooped down on him in his phoenix form and screeched at him. Lance yelped in shock, pulled his seal skin on, and quickly scooted over to hide behind Keith.

The two wicche’s had a bit of a laugh about it, and Keith dragged Lance into the small sitting room. Keith sat on a chair and Lance stayed on the ground, looking kind of grumpy and kept looking over at the kitchen. Keith did call out to Adam to make sure that Lance’s tuna gets served raw. That seemed to placate Lance for the moment and he calmed down a lot.

Shiro smiled happily at Keith and Lance. “So, everythings working out okay?”

“It’s as good as it can be.” Said Keith. “We’re still in the transitioning stage at the moment. It’ll take time. What do you think Lance?”

Lance looked up at him, still in his seal skin. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!”

“... I think that’s seal for yes?”

Shiro cringed and covered his ears. “Well, you know he’s at least a good guard dog. He’s louder than a warning horn.”

Lance seemed very pleased with that assessment and started slapping his side like he was attempting to clap. He still looked happy, so Keith didn’t mind. Though he was pretty sure Lance was going to give him tinnitus at this point. Lance’s screams were no joke.

After about half an hour dinner was ready and they went to sit at the table, with much protest from Lance, because he had to be a person to eat and not a seal. Shiro and Keith enjoyed some chicken soup while Lance got his tuna, and Adam was eating raw chicken. A perfectly normal diet for the wicche’s and their familiars.

It was kind of nice and domestic. Keith liked this. It had been a long time since Keith had dinner with Shiro. The last time he did was before his final exams. Adam cooked Keith beef stew and talked about what job Keith might be assigned. They had talked about things he wanted to be, and things he really didn’t want to be.

Adam had suggested that Keith become a teacher. Keith quickly shot that down, the same with Shiro. Keith sure as hell knew that he didn’t play well with others. He’d be more likely to set the damn kids on fire rather than teach them. Kids were little shits.

Keith’s top three choices were to become either; a relic collector, an arcane weapon’s master, or a beast slayer. Being a relic collector meant he would have to run around in the wilds collecting all manner of things such as ancient tree sap and dragon scales. If he was a beast slayer he’d be going from town to town exterminating dangerous magical creatures that plagued towns. Either one of those would have been fun for him. He was still glad to be an arcane weapon’s master. When he tried, he could really focus on his manna and create some wonderful arcane weapons.

“So how’s the soup?” Asked Adam.

“Not burnt to hell.” Said Keith. “So really, really good.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “I start one small, out of control fire…”

“You almost burnt down your whole tower!” Cried Keith. “I had to keep it from spreading while some water wicche’s put it out!”

Adam snickered. “It was pretty terrible Takashi.”

Shiro pouted and poked at his food. “I shouldn’t be taking this from a guy that died from a cold last year.”

“You died?” Asked Lance in shock. He was so shocked he actually put his tuna back on the plate. Still had his nails digging into it though.

Adam looked over at the selkie and nodded. “Yes. A phoenix bursts into fire when they die, completely cremating and then are reborn from the ashes. As long as our ashes are not scattered to the wind the moment we die, we can pretty much be immortal.”

“... Cool, so how long are you like, a baby?”

“We grow up pretty quickly. We go through the stages of infancy to adulthood within the span of a month.” Informed Adam happily. “After that we can stay as adults for many, many years. I gave Keith quite a fright when I suddenly died in front of him.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “You’d freak out too if you were a fire mage, walked past your friend’s familiar and it caught fire.”

“There was so much screaming and crying.” Said Shiro.

“I was fifteen and on the verge of getting kicked out!” Whined Keith. “Killing your familiar could have ended me! I didn’t know Adam was a phoenix! I thought he was dead! I thought I was going to die!”

Shiro snickered. “And then you were screaming in terror when you saw a tiny, bald, baby phoenix pop out of the ashes and it screamed at you.”

“It was scary!” Cried Keith. “Baby birds look like aliens!”

Adam scoffed. “All baby animals look gross when they are born. Human babies are all gross and slimy when they first pop out of their mothers. Pretty sure seals are all slimy and gross too.”

Lance shrugged. “I guess? The women in my pod prefer shallow water, but some have pups on land or ice. They don’t like men around when they give birth… Some old wives tale that if a male sees a baby being born they will take the pup and kill them. Normal stuff.”

Keith raised an eyebrow at that. “That’s a thing?”

Lance shrugged and picked some bones out of his teeth. “It’s just what people say. I don’t mind it though. The beach is nice enough during breeding season and it’s always nice to just roll around in the sand for a few days… sharks are a bit of a pain though… This tuna is really nice by the way. Raw tuna is the best! That and squid.”

“How did you get that anyway?” Asked Keith. “The ocean is pretty far away.”

Shiro grinned. “Being the regional wicche does have its perks… But I probably won’t be able to get more tuna for a while.” Lance seemed a little disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to get more tuna any time soon, but he quickly went back to eating his fish, quickly finishing it before anyone else had finished their food.

After dinner the small group talked for a little longer before Keith and Lance had to leave. Lance whined about having to walk down the stairs. He whined even louder when he realised that he needed to walk home too. Keith just rolled his eyes and walked back home.

When they got home, Lance happily flopped down onto his little bed and made himself comfortable. “... My sleeping quarters is too small…”

“I can make it a little bigger tomorrow. Did you enjoy your dinner?” Asked Keith as he climbed up to his loft.

Lance grinned and nodded. “Yeah. Walking up all those stairs sucked though.”

Keith rolled his eyes as he changed into his bed clothes. “Wow, I never would have guessed. Maybe you should scream louder next time.”

“I can if you want me to.”

“Don’t you dare!”

Lance chuckled as he looked up at his Master from the ground floor. “... Shiro and Adam seem pretty close huh?”

“Yeah. They are in love.”

Lance seemed surprised by this. “Oh? Really? Is that allowed?”

Keith shrugged. “Adam is a higher magical creature. Many higher magical creatures can choose to have relationships with their human masters. If they have something like a dog or cat as their familiar, then that’s familiar abuse and that’s punishable by several years in the dungeon or in the most extreme cases, death.”

“... Ouch.”

“Yeah, but Adam and Shiro are in the clear.” Reassured Keith. “Adam was the one that approached Shiro first. Shiro sucks at mental manipulation, but he can check for charms and spells pretty easily. He was able to tell no one had mezmerised Adam or made him say something like that. It was a little weird to me at first, but magical creatures can and have interbred with humans before… Dragonborn are a thing after all.”

“True. Selkies have children with humans all the time.” Said Lance. He yawned and snuggled more into his bed. “... My papa was a fisherman.”

That was a surprise to Keith. He would have thought that Lance’s family were all selkies. “Really?”

“Yeah… My papa found my pod’s breeding island by accident one year.” Said Lance. “The leaders of the pod wanted to kill him because of all the rumours about the horrible things humans do, but papa made a deal with them and stayed over one side of the island far away from the selkies… Mama and papa still fell in love anyway.”

“And then they had you?”

Lance chuckled “Well, eventually. I’m the youngest of five. After my big brother Marco was born things were a little tense between the pod and papa. But things worked themselves out and eventually mama had me.”

“Huh… Alright.” Now Keith had more questions. “Does this mean you’re half human?”

Lance laughed and sighed. “No. All children born of the sea belong to the sea… Hey Keith?”

“Yeah?” 

“Can we go to the ocean soon?”

“... As long as I don’t get a huge order for anything I’ll take you to the ocean as soon as I reasonably can. I’m still a lesser arcane weapon’s master, so I could get really bogged down with work soon.” Said Keith calmly. “But we’ll go to the ocean soon.”

Lance made a happy sound. “Thanks Keith. I’d really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Goodnight Lance.”

“Night Keith.”

Keith smiled a little and made himself comfortable in his own bed. Though he was still filled with many questions about Lance. Lance was just… He was such an odd creature with an even odder lineage. Keith really had no idea about aquatic creatures at all. His knowledge only extended to the life in the ponds and rivers.


	5. A selkie's work

Lance’s morning routine as Keith’s familiar was pretty easy. He’d roll off of his bed, change into his human form and head down to the well to get water for the day. When Keith woke up he would always make tea and cook food. Lance wanted to make his morning as easy as possible. That’s just what a familiar was meant to do.

After he got Keith a fresh bucket of water, Lance pulled his seal skin on and happily flopped into the river. The current was practically non existent so Lance could just lazily drift around in the water while he hunted for river fish. They were nice, but he preferred seafood.

Lance managed to grab a rish and happily tossed it onto the riverbank to eat. He happily ate it as he watched someone walking up to Keith’s house with a parcel. Lance stayed in the water and glared at them. He wasn’t too sure what they wanted.

He watched them knock at the door. Keith answered, took the parcel from them, and the person left. When they were gone Lance got out of the water, took off his seal skin, and walked up to the house. “What was that?”

Keith already had the parcel on his work bench and was happily eating his own breakfast. “Just got a job. It’s probably going to take a day or two to complete.”

“Oh nice. What are you doing?”

“Enchanting small throwing knives with air elements and daggers with water elements.”

“Why?”

“Air elements are to make them lighter than they usually would be.” Said Keith. “Water elements to make it very, very difficult to dry the wound and therefore they bleed out faster.”

“... Huh. Alright. Do you need me to do anything?”

“Glad you asked. I have a list.” Keith handed a piece of parchment to Lance. “I need you to go into town to get these things for me. You can get them all at the apothecary. It’s right by the blacksmith’s so if you get a little lost you can go in and ask Kolivan for help.”

Lance nodded and took the paper from him. He couldn’t read that chicken scratch that humans call writing. “Okay. I can do that.”

“Yeah, but breakfast first.” He pushed a plate with eggs and bread towards Lance.

Never being one to turn down a free feed he happily sat down and ate it. Eggs were nice and so was toasted bread. It was yummy. Bread was good. Eggs were good. It made his stomach feel all warm and good inside. He liked dipping the bread crust into the yolk when it was runny. It tasted even better when they had salt. It reminded Lance of home.

When he was done eating Keith forced Lance into pants, which Lance did not like, and gave him a satchel to carry the things on his list, along with some money. Lance took a bit of time adjusting his seal skin and ended up wearing it like a cape.

“How do I look?”

“Suitable to walk into the village without getting arrested for public indecency.” Said Keith. “Now get going.”

Lance rolled his eyes and happily made his way to the village. He still got a few weird looks from people but they generally accepted that the weirdo walking around with a seal skin around their body was the familiar of a wicche. 

He happily made his way to the apothecary and handed over Keith’s list of things. The person behind the counter looked like a small child with big round glasses. “So… You’re Keith’s familiar?” They asked.

Lance nodded. “Yep. I’m Lance. I’m a selkie.”

“Cool. I’m Pidge. My brother Matt and I own this place.” They took the list and started to walk around the shop collecting the items that were on the list. “Looks like Keith has a big order if he needs this much slime gel.”

“Slime gel? What’s that for?” Asked Lance. He was genuinely curious about Keith’s line of work.

Pidge shrugged. “It’s used for a lot of stuff, but mostly as a manna supplement. Like, if a wicche is low on manna they just brew up a quick potion with a bit of this stuff in it. Boosts your manna right back up.”

“Huh, alright.”

Pidge gathered all the things needed and took the money. “Yeah. Well that;s just how it is sometimes. Also, I threw in a bit of sea salt in there for you. Thought you might appreciate it.”

Lance was beaming. “Aw, thank you so much.” Lance loved salt water.

When Lance was done he walked outside and was about to head home when he saw the blacksmith’s place. Maybe he could find some practice knives for Keith to enchant? That would be nice, and Kolivan seemed okay too, if not a little scary.

He walked into the shop and saw Kolivan dipping a large metal thing into a bucket of water. “What are you making?” Asked Lance.

Kolivan looked over at Lance and nodded at him. “Morning Lance. Good to see you again. I’m making a bird cage.”

“Oooooooo.” Lance happily watched Kolivan work. He loved watching the metal change colour from grey to red to white. It was pretty. He liked it. “So are you a wicche?” Asked Lance. “Like, you turn metals into cool things. I like it.”

The older man chuckled. “No, I’m just a simple blacksmith. Never had an ounce of manna in me… Well, I guess I have some. Keith said that all living things have some manna in them… But it’s whatever. I’m just happy to work… Oh! I have something for you, well Keith…” He walked to the back of his shop and handed a box to Lance. “Here. He should be able to do something with this.”

Lance nodded and happily put it into his satchel. “Will do. See you later Kolivan.”

“Goodbye Lance. Don’t you or Keith be strangers now. Come by any time.”

“Will do.” Lance happily started walking back home. He hummed to himself as he walked through the village. He was just humming a song that his mama had taught him. She called it their pod song. It sounded a lot better in seal but she taught him an english translation so that he could sing it with his papa.

It had been a long time since he had seen his papa. The man was very, very nice, but selkies yearned to return to the ocean. The ocean was their home and always would be. If Lance was being honest he really wanted to go back to the ocean soon. The river that followed by Keith’s home was very nice and helped with some of his home sickness, but he wanted more.

When he got back to Keith’s home and happily walked in. “I’m back!”

Keith was already hunched over his work bench and using arcane magic to get his work done. He looked over at Lance and nodded at him. “Hey. Did you get the stuff?”

“Yep… Where do I put it?”

“Just bring it over.”

Lance nodded and put the satchel on a clear space by Keith. The fire wicche opened it up and quickly took out all the bottles of powders and liquids. He paused when he found a bottle of salt. “Why do you have this?”

“Pidge gave it to me.” Said Lance. “Can I keep it? I want to put some salt into some of my water so it feels more like home when I wash my hair.”

“Oh sure. Just be careful. Salt isn’t very easy to come by around here. You’re going to have to ration it.”

“Fair… Oh, Kolivan gave me something to give to you too.” He took the box out of the bag and handed it to Keith. “Here. For you.”

Keith frowned a little and took out a dagger with a gemstone firmly set in the guard and practically up the handle. Lance thought it looked pretty. Keith turned it over in his hand a few times before he made a surprised sound.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Said Keith. “The metal has a slight purple tinge see?” He moved the dagger slightly so that it shone a little in the light. “There is a certain ore combination you can smith together to give it a purple tinge. This metal is stronger and more resilient than normal metal before being infused with magic.”

Lance looked at the purple dagger in shock. “Whoa, really? That’s so cool!”

“Yeah, the only people that know how to make this are Galra smith’s from Diabazzel.”

“Does that mean Kolivan is Galra? So he’s from a different pod?”

Keith chuckled and nodded. “Yeah. Kind of like that… You don’t see much gal-steal outside of Diabazzel. It’s very hard to get the right ores outside of Diabazzel.” He held the knife in the hand and carefully swished it through the air a few times. He seemed to like how it felt in his hand. “Very well balanced… Light weight, but still has some force behind it.”

Lance nodded and pointed to the stone set in it. “Is the stone anything special or is it just a rock?”

Keith looked at the stone for a few seconds. “I’ll look it up later but it looks like a transformation stone. If someone with manna keeps this weapon on them for a few days it will fill with the owners manna and will eventually be able to change into a second form based on the manna it absorbs.”

“... That’s cool. Magic stuff is awesome! Can you make it change now?”

“I need to use all my manna for my work.” Said Keith. “Thanks for getting this for me. I appreciate it.”

Lance grinned. “No problem. This is what I’m meant to do right? Make your life easier?”

Keith smiled back at him. “Yeah. Well I’m going to be doing this for most of the day so you can go and hang out in the river if you want.”

“Sweet. Thanks Keith. I’ll be back around dinner time to make sure you’re eating something.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Whatever. You do you Lance.”

Lance grinned and happily went back down to the water. He pulled his seal skin on and fell into the water with a splash. Freshwater felt nice against his skin, but he still yearned for saltwater. He loved the feel of it against his skin along with the sand and seaweed.

He happily swam down the river and then back up it. He did a few laps and only stopped when he found a big catfish and happily caught it. He happily tossed it out onto the river bank and happily ate it. It was yummy, but not salty enough.

He sighed a little and rested his head against the grass. He could still smell the sea salt off in the distance. It was just lingering there and it made Lance sigh. Feelings of being homesick and yearning for his home. Lance sighed and lightly tapped his flippers against the ground as he lightly sang in his seal tongue. 

_“To you my home, and love I will return._  
 _Your beauty, strength, and changing nature_  
 _For you my heart will always yearn._  
 _My life, my love for thee will never waver.”_   
.


	6. Letters to the wicche

Keith noticed a change in Lance’s behaviour after he had finished his order. The selkie just seemed tired and hardly made noise when he rolled around the house anymore. He mostly just lied down on the stone floor and lightly slapped at the ground. Either that or he would swim around outside or sleep on the riverbank.

He could have been sleepy or something, but Keith was a little worried. Was this some kind of selkie depression? Did his selkie have depression? What the hell was he meant to do about that? Keith didn’t really do well with feelings.

He packed up the last of the daggers and throwing knives back into the box and fastened the lid on with some twine. He’d have to drop it off back at the main forge for pick up later that week if he wanted to get paid. Keith looked down at Lance who was in his seal form. He seemed to be trying to make himself as round as possible before he stretched out and made himself very long. It was amusing.

“Are you okay there?” He asked.

“Rah.” Rumbled Lance as he just flopped down on the ground.

It made Keith sigh. He sat down next to Lance and awkwardly patted him. “Um… You seem a little stressed and stuff. Do you um… Do you need something? Like salt water?”

Lance sighed and sat up. He pulled off his seal skin and sighed again. “Just a little homesick. That’s all. Don’t worry about it. Like, don’t get me wrong, your place is awesome and I really like it… But it’s just… It isn’t the same. You know?”

“Yeah, I get it.” Said Keith. “Um… Sorry I don’t live closer to the sea…”

“It’s okay…” Said Lance quietly. It was obvious that this wasn’t okay with the selkie.

Keith frowned a little as he tried to think about what to do. He wanted Lance to feel better but he wasn’t sure how to do it. He couldn’t just up and leave for the ocean unless he absolutely had to or was sent there for some reason. This was… troublesome. But maybe if they went to the beach then Lance could gather some things to make living with him a little more tolerable? It couldn’t hurt.

“Hey Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you enjoy going down to the village?”

Lance smiled and nodded. “Yeah. It’s nice. People there are starting to recognise me. Sometimes if I help the baker or butcher they will give me some salt.”

“Oh really? Is that why you’re getting back late when I ask you to go and get stuff for me?”

Lance shrugged. “Well you never said anything about not helping people.”

“It’s fine. I was just curious… You look kind of dry.”

“Yeah, I feel kind of dry too.” Muttered Lance as he rubbed his cheek. “Yeah, I’m going to go have a swim.”

“You go ahead and do that.” When Lance wandered outside Keith went back to his workbench. He took out a sheet of parchment, grabbed his inkwell and quill, and started to write out a letter.

_Dear Shiro,_   
_I was wondering if you could send me an official letter to send me to the ocean. I don’t really care what the reason is. It just needs to be official so I don’t get a bunch of work when I get back. Lance is feeling homesick and I thought it might be good to get some things from the ocean to make him feel better. Plus I read somewhere that Selkies want to return to the ocean. I don’t want Lance to feel like he’s trapped here. I’d really appreciate it._   
_Humble regards, Keith._

When he was done he read the letter over a few times to make sure that this was what he wanted to say to him. It seemed good enough. Keith quickly cracked his knuckles and folded the parchment into a swan. He walked outside and blew on the origami bird. The swan twitched and turned its neck a few times. It wiggled its wings and took off into the sky. It should make its way to Shiro within the hour.

While he waited Keith decided to lie down on the hillside and warm up in the sun. He had spent a lot of his manna up on his knife order for the crown. He found that staying warm and out in the sun helped to recharge his manna when he was really drained. Sure he could go ahead and make a manna potion to refill it himself, but he didn’t like the taste. It always tasted like slimy licorice. It was gross.

He closed his eyes and let the heat from the sun warm him and rejuvenate him. He hummed softly and let the heat slowly build back up inside him. He felt his fingers and toes tingling as the rest of the world melted away and all he could hear was his heartbeat and the only thing he could feel was his manna slowly replenishing. If he was a better wicche he wouldn’t have to do this. He could just take a nape and have a bit of food or drink, then he would be ready to go again. It was kind of annoying, but he could reach that level eventually if he tried hard enough.

His almost meditative state was broken when he heard the sound of something fluttering. Keith opened his eyes to see an origami mandarin bird flying over to him. Keith reached up and grabbed it. He yawned a little and rubbed his eyes. He felt groggy and didn’t know how much time had passed.

He opened up the origami bird and saw that it was two sheets of parchment. The first one looked like a cover letter from Shiro.

_Dear Lesser Arcane Weapons Master, Keith Kogane_   
_You are being tasked to travel to the fishing village of Saltwall that sits along the Gem Sea. When you get there you are to take inventory and record any and all weaponry with magical properties and mark them as active or inactive. Present the document enclosed to the village elder/mayor/chieftain to acknowledge that this inventory is legal and sanctioned by the crown._   
_Regards, Regional head Wicche, Takashi Shirogane_

Keith looked at the second sheet of parchment. It was the usual royal document that told whoever was in charge to let them do their thing. He would have to keep this close to himself until he presented it to whoever was in charge of Saltwall. He carefully folded the document in half and noticed a smaller piece or parchment stuck to the back of it. Keith carefully peeled it off and read it. It was a note from Shiro.

_Can you also bring back some conch shells and some seaweed?_

He tucked the letters into his robe and looked down to the water’s edge to see if Lance was around. He quickly spotted the seal quietly stalking a duck. Lance probably hadn’t seen a duck before. Maybe a seagull but not a duck.

“Lance!” He called.

The selkie quickly looked up at him. “Haaaaaaarh?” He rumbled.

“We’re going to the ocean tomorrow!”

Lance’s eyes went wide and he quickly climbed out of the river, pulling off the seal skin as he did. He grinned at him and practically jumped onto Keith’s lap. “Really? Are we really going to? Why?”

“Just some stuff I need to do.” Said Keith. “Really simple stuff. You can play in the ocean while I’m there.”

“Thank you so much.” He seemed extremely excited to be able to go back to the ocean for a while. “Which one are we going to?”

“Um… Do you know the Gem sea? We’re going there. Specifically a village called Saltwall.”

Lance gasped in shock. “Know it? That’s where my Papa lives!”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yes! I’m so excited! I usually only see him once or twice a year!” Said Lance. “Can we go now? I’m so excited!”

“Woah there Lance. We have to pack some stuff, and I need to drop off the knives before we go.”

“Hurry up and do it!” Whined Lance as he pulled at Keith’s robe. “I wanna see my papa! I wanna get back in the ocean! I wanna go back home!”

“Don’t worry.” Said Keith in a reassuring manner. “We will get there. I’ll drop the knives off now and we’ll prepare some previsions to get going first thing in the morning. What do you say?”

Lance grinned. He grabbed Keith’s face and kissed him. Right on the mouth. When he pulled back, the Selkie looked a little worried. “Are you okay?”

“Why did you kiss me?”

“Oh, when Mama and Papa see each other again after they have been apart for so long they kiss each other on the mouth. Mama said it’s a human custom to kiss the people that make you really, really happy. I thought since you were human you would appreciate it?”

Keith could feel his face burning in embarrassment. “Kissing someone like that… That’s what lovers do…”

“Oh… Oops.” Muttered Lance. “So, does this mean we’re lovers now?”

“What? No. Just be careful who you kiss like that… Even if they do make you really happy.”

“... Sounds dumb, but fine… I’m gonna go and pack stuff to show my papa!” Lance quickly climbed off of Keith and ran back inside. Keith groaned and rubbed his face. He couldn’t believe that Lance just kissed him and he got a bunch of fish scales on his lips.


	7. Saltwall

Saltwall was a quaint little fishing village. There were about twenty houses clustered around with two or three other buildings for public use such as a small church, a town hall, and a pub. It was nice enough in Keith’s eyes, but Lance was practically buzzing with excitement.

“I can’t believe we’re here!” He squealed. “We have to see my papa first! He might be home right now. If not he’ll be out fishing.” He grinned and grabbed Keith’s arm. “Come on. I wanna see him.”

“Hey, you don’t need to pull me along.” Grumbled Keith. He was kind of grouchy today. Mostly because Lance got lazy and Keith had to use a wagon to pull the selkie along. His arms, shoulders and back all hurt. He hated it. Damn lazy selkie. Also, Keith still hated the ocean. Large bodies of water in general were the bane of a fire wicche’s existence.

Lance just grinned at him and happily bounced along the pathway and practically ran down the pathway to a small shack with a net hung up out on the lawn. There was a decorative wooden seal hanging on the door. Keith followed close behind Lance.

Lance quickly knocked on the door and bounced on his heels for a few seconds. The door opened and a slightly disheveled man, that bore a striking resemblance to Lance, opened the door. His hair was long and tied back, his skin was flecked with salt, he had a slight beard, and his skin was riddled with freckles and some deep wrinkles.

The man looked shocked to see his son standing there. “Lance?”

“Papa!” Lance threw himself at the man and hugged him tightly. 

The older man laughed and happily hugged him back.. “Lance, mi hijo! What are you doing here? It isn’t Summer time yet. Did something happen to your pod? Your mama?”

Lance shook his head. “Oh no. Everyone is fine. I just came to see you because I’m a wicche’s familiar now.” He looked over at Keith and grinned. “Papa, this is my Master, Keith, or as his full title is known as…” Lance cleared his throat. “Lesser arcane weapons master, Keith. He’s a fire wicche.”

Lance’s father raised an eyebrow and looked over at Keith with a critical eye. It made Keith shudder a little. It was a cold gaze. Something that if the man was a wicche himself, Keith was sure he would be dead.

He kind of just just awkwardly stepped away from them. “Well… I gotta go give this letter to the leader of the town… I um… I assume he’s in or around the town hall… Um… I’ll be back later…” He quickly turned tail and ran. He felt like he might get hit with a harpoon or some other sea weaponry.

He found the village elder soon enough and gave him the official letter. He seemed annoyed but showed Keith to the armory. The walls were lined with enchanted fishing nets, scaling knives, harpoons, and spears. This was going to take a while.

***

While Keith was busy doing his official duty, Lance was happy to spend time with his papa. The man had some fish stew cooking and offered it to his son. Lance made an extremely happy trill as he ate the soup. It was seasoned with minimal seasoning, just seasalt and a little bit of pepper. It didn’t take away from the fresh taste of fish and octopus.

“This is so yummy!” He exclaimed. “You always make the best soup papa.”

The older man smiled and ate his own soup. “You all love my soup. Your mama loves it to this day… So tell me, what is this nonsense about that wet candle being your master? I thought you could resist the pull of being summoned?”

Lance shrugged. “I could and I almost did… But the manna that came from him just reached out and felt so warm and comforting… Papa, you know I love the ocean, and I love the land too. It’s practically impossible for me to leave the ocean and walk further than the beach… The island our pod stays on during breeding season only has a little grass, but it’s mostly a sandbank really…”

His papa sighed and shook his head. “Lance… I know you’re kind of… Impulsive, but humans aren’t as nice to selkies as I am. The stories your pod tells of humans stealing and burning seal skins to keep selkies in their human forms… Most of them are unfortunately true. Lots of humans will try and take your skin and hurt you.”

Lance wrinkled his nose. “Keith isn’t like that.”

“How long have you known him?”

“A few weeks.” Said Lance. He smiled and started to gush about his life with Keith. “He’s so cool! He puts magic in weapons. He buys me fish whenever there is some in the market. Salt is really expensive but we have a jar of salt that Keith lets me use to put in my water bucket when I want to wash myself with salt water. Oh, when we don’t have fish he feeds me chicken. It tastes really nice. Keith’s been talking about making a chicken coup so we can have eggs and fresh chicken every now and then. It’s so good!”

His father seemed a little taken aback by how happy Lance was and how quickly he was talking. He should have expected it. Lance was the most talkative of all his children. There was more than one occasion where Lance’s brother’s and sisters would shove Lance’s face into the sand or put a bucket on his head to try and stop him talking. Try being the important word. They never succeeded. 

Lance had always been too kind. Too curious. Too trusting. Now he had gone and done something that was potentially dangerous to himself. He didn’t know Keith. He couldn’t trust him to look after his son the way he needed to be. He was a selkie for crying out loud. Selkies needed certain things to stay happy and healthy.

Then there were the things that Keith could do to hurt Lance. He was a fire wicche and some kind of weapon’s master. Keith could seriously hurt his son, and it wasn’t like Lance could run back into the ocean to escape. Lance was calling Keith his Master. That had to have meant that Lance was Keith’s familiar, right? Lance was bound to Keith now. If Keith got angry at Lance or, heaven forbid, obsessed with the selkie he could burn his seal skin and Lance would never be able to return to the ocean. He’d be stuck on land forever.

That thought made him shudder. He’d heard of poor selkie women becoming severely depressed and throwing themselves back into the ocean after their lovers decided they wouldn’t let them return home. He didn’t want Lance to suffer that crippling illness. Lance was pretty strong when it came to magical ocean creatures, if he had to he could probably break whatever bond Keith had with him and return to the ocean.

“Are you still able to swim?”

“Keith’s home is right next to a river.” Said Lance. “It’s really nice. Though it is fresh water. Not a huge fan of it, but he liked it. It’s refreshing, but nothing beats salt water. I miss eating squid… Oh, I don’t know if Keith has eaten squid before. Have you got anymore? I want to see what his reaction is.”

“Yeah, I still have some octopus ready for him.” He muttered. He still worried so much about Lance. Selkies, like most magical sea creatures, had many secrets. Secrets both wondrous and dangerous. Even he didn’t know many of them and was only privy to the few secrets that his wife, Lance’s mother, was willing to share with him.

One of the selkies most interesting secrets was that they cried pearls. It was strange. He hadn’t fully understood it, but thought it was beautiful. She had gifted him dozens of different coloured pearls when they came to visit and they came in a range of colours. Most of the pearls she had given him were pink or blue. She had told him that pink and blue meant happiness and love. But if a selkie ever cried black pearls that would mean absolute despair and said selkie would be dead soon. 

When his children were sea pups they mostly cried white pearls with hints of lavender here and there. His wife, bless her soul, just booped her pups on the nose and rolled them around on the sand. If that didn’t work she would give them food. Pups at that age only wanted to play or to get fed. There was no inbetween.

He worried that Keith might find out about Lance’s tears and hurt him for them. He didn’t know what kind of wicche he was. But if he worked with weapons… Keith might exploit Lance. Make him all happy to be around him, and then he’d start hurting him to get his pearls.

Lance grinned. “Can I help you cook something?”

“Hmm, you can, but I thought you might like swimming down around in the ocean first?”

Lance’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! Can I?”

“Of course. Just be a little careful.” He warned. “Some netting got their netting tangled up on some rocks. Most of it is gone, but just stay away from that area.”

“Will do.” Lance happily walked out the backdoor and walked over the small sand hill and he was back at the ocean. That beautiful blue water was calling for him. He ran down to the water as fast as he could and he pulled his seal skin over his body, and dived into the water. In retrospect he was a little over excited and kind of body slammed into relatively shallow waters. “Aaaaargh…” He quickly looked around to make sure no one saw him make a fool of himself, and then he shuffled into the water.

Like a loving embrace the water wrapped around Lance and welcomed him back. Lance happily swam around the pier and docks. He found a few familiar fish and quickly swam after them to try and eat them. He was happy. He was home. He surfaced and happily bobbed along the water and looked at all the new and old boats listlessly floating on the water.

He saw some people in a basic paddle boat and couldn’t help but swim under the boat and gave it a quick bump. The fishermen in the boat were a little surprised, but happy to see Lance in all his seal glory. They tossed him a fish head, which Lance happily ate. Lance was so happy to have fresh fish he spun around a few times and made very happy sounds. Fresh fish was the best.

As far as Lance knew, everyone kind of suspected that his papa was sleeping with his mama and had selkie offspring, but no one really brought it up. As far as Lance knew, his papa was pretty well respected in town and was one of the few people that happily saved any octopus that made their way into crab pots and would cook them up right then and there. It was always appreciated by the men trying to catch crabs.

Lance liked crab claws. Those were good. Maybe he could get his papa to buy a few crab legs and claws? Those would be nice. Keith would love them too. They were so yummy… Boiling them was fine too. Seemed to be more of a human thing to cook their food first. So weird. Raw was the superior way to eat everything.

After swimming around for a while and climbed onto a small flat rock that some fishermen liked to sit on to fish and lounged around in the sun. When he was a pup, he and his siblings would always fight over who got to lay on the rock. Marco and Luis usually won since they could throw their weight around a lot easier than his sisters could or Lance. Mostly because female leopard seals were smaller than males, and Lance was the youngest. The only one the boys would get off the rock for was their mama. She would always bellow at them to get off the rock and go back to the shore.

Lance was pleased that he got to sleep on the rock himself. It was nice and peaceful. Maybe he could show Keith the sunning rock too? It would be a while before his pod swam through this area. Keith liked laying in the sun so he’d probably like this too. Lance made many happy sounds as he thought about that. Keith would love it for sure.

***

When Keith was finished in the armory he thanked the village elder and headed back to Lance’s dad’s house. He awkwardly knocked on the door and it swung open. “... Hello?” He called as he looked in. He saw Lance’s dad chopping some tentacled animal into pieces on a chopping board. He didn’t even bother glancing up at him.

“So you’re back, wicche.” He muttered in a gruff voice.

Keith nodded and very cautiously stayed a few feet away from the man with a knife. “Yes… It’s um… Your village is nice.”

“Saltwall is what it is.” He said as he brought the knife down on the weird fish thing again. “It’s a fishing village. Not some crazy huge village, but it is what it is.”

“... It’s nice.” Keith said quietly. The tension quickly started to build as they quietly stood there, listening to the sound of the chopping board.

Finally the older man put the knife down and sighed heavily. “Why did you have to choose Lance?”

Keith was a little taken aback by that statement. A lot of common people thought that wicche’s could control magic 100% of the time, but in all honesty, if there was one animal that shouldn’t be allowed to use magic it would be humans. Humans were practically just throwing paint at the wall and sometimes they make a work of art.

“Sir, I… I didn’t ask for Lance to be my familiar.” Keith said calmly. “I just sent my manna out and I… Selkies have water based manna. It’s opposite to mine. I have fire based manna and I kind of expected getting an answer from a creature with matching fire manna, or maybe earth manna? I didn’t expect to get a familiar like Lance, but no creature is really forced to do it, let alone a magic creature like Lance. He chose to-”

“Bullshit!” Snapped the man. He slammed his knife into the cutting board with such force it stayed stuck in there. He glared at Keith with venom. “Lance loves the ocean. Selkies love the ocean. He’ll slowly start to wither away and end up killing himself. Selkies can’t leave the ocean for so long.”

“Lance has been-”

“He’s not going to tell you if something is wrong until it’s too late.” Said the older man. He groaned in annoyance and scratched his chin. “He’ll tell you he’s feeling one thing, when he really feels another… I swear if you end up hurting him, I will end you.”

Keith wasn’t one to take threats lightly. He put his hands up and tried to appear non threatening. “I don’t plan on hurting Lance. I’m trying really hard to figure out how to keep him happy and functional…”

The older man glared at him. He didn’t seem to believe him. He took the knife out of the chopping block and pointed it at him. “If Lance ever comes to me and tells me you’ve been hurting him I will gut you like a fish.”

“U-understood…”

He narrowed his eyes at Keith. He was still pissed off at him, clearly. Keith had no idea what he was meant to do to reassure him that he wasn’t going to hurt Lance. This wasn’t something he was used to. Parental wrath was new to him. Keith was an orphan. He didn’t really understand the bond between parent and child, but he knew that the man really cared about Lance.

Suddenly there was a loud thump on the backdoor along with a disgruntled seal noise. The older man shot Keith one more dirty look before he went and opened the door. Lance was there, in his seal form, with an octopus attached to his face.

“... Why are you like this?” Asked the old man.

“Braaaaaaaaagh!” Bellowed Lance.

His papa rolled his eyes and quickly went to work removing it from his face. “Did you have a good swim?” He asked. “Salt water feels good against your skin, huh?”

“Gggrah!” Huffed Lance as he nodded his head. He snorted some salt water out of his nose.

His papa chuckled and continued to free Lance. “Alright. Okay, now you’re free. Were you bringing this back for us or did you get attacked?”

“Arrrgah! Rrrrah!” Whined Lance. “Aaaaaaaaaagrah!” He then grabbed the octopus off the floor and quickly ate it. He seemed pleased with himself.

“Ah, you got attacked.” Muttered his papa. “Stop sticking your nose into random places. You are just asking for trouble. You got attacked by an eel before. Mr nosey.”

Lance looked shocked before he made a dismissive noise and looked away. “Brargh…”

“Yes. very nosey.” Said his papa. The man kneeled down next to his son and happily petted him and scratched him around his jawline and chin. Lance quickly lost whatever kind of anger he had towards his papa and happily tapped and slapped his flippers against the ground. 

Keith was kind of jealous at the bond Lance had with his papa. He hadn’t really had that growing up. He just stood back and watched them for a bit as they showered each other with familial affection. Suddenly Lance’s eyes lit and happily waddled over to him.

“Aaaaaaagh!” He bellowed.

Keith raised an eyebrow and put his hand on Lance’s head. “You’re really loud. You know that right?” 

Lance looked proud of himself and pulled his seal skin off. He grinned up at him. “Yep. I know I’m really loud. One of the loudest. Have you had any of papa’s seafood soup yet? It’s so good.” He pulled Keith over to the stove, kind of ignoring his papa and happily gave him a bowl of seafood soup. He grinned and watched as Keith tried it.

“... It’s very salty.” Said Keith honestly. “The fish, I assume it’s fish?”

“The flakey stuff?” Asked Lance. “Yeah. That’s fish.”

Keith nodded and ate some more. “The rubbery thing is kind of nice too.”

“That’s octopus.” Said Lance. “It’s really, really yummy. It tastes a lot better raw. You humans are so weird with your cooking stuff. It’s weird. Also those are oysters… and those are crab legs.”

“Huh, interesting… It’s very nice. This is the kind of stuff you like eating, right?”

Lance nodded enthusiastically. “Yep. Papa’s soup is the best. Tastes amazing. Do you think you could try making it at home?”

“Well… We don’t really have fresh seafood where we are…” Said Keith quietly. “But I’ll try my best. You still like chicken, right?”

Lance nodded. “Chicken is yummy too.” He looked over at his dad. “Papa? Why Keith is doing his wicche thing, can we stay here? Please?”

The older man didn’t seem very happy for Keith to be there, but he seemed to do it for his son. “Okay. Fine… But the wicche is sleeping on the floor. I only have one bed and I have a bad hip.”

“That’s fine.” Lance smiled and happily tugged on Keith’s arm, despite him still trying to eat his soup. “Come on. I’ll show you where we’re going to sleep. You’re going to like it. It’s very comfy.” Keith highly doubted it, but if it meant moving away from Lance’s old man for a bit he was all for it.


	8. Rum and stars

The place where Lance was sleeping in his papa’s house was perfect for a seal, but not so much for a human. It was a room added onto the relatively small one man fishing shack that was filled with sand. Some of it was damp, but most of it was dry. There were clumps of wet kelp and seaweed in the corners and a few rocks with some barnacles on them. It was… Interesting.

Keith made himself comfortable on the dryer sand. Keith rolled up his outer robe and used that as a pillow. Lance happily made himself comfortable in the damp sand and looked very pleased with himself. He was, once again, a very happy Selkie. He happily looked up at Keith with his big, blue eyes and huffed out his nose.

“... You got something to say?” He asked.

Lance slapped his tail against the sand. “Bragh!”

“Can’t understand you Lance.”

Lance huffed and pulled off his seal skin. “I was asking if you were comfortable. You don’t often sleep on the ground… I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you sleep on the ground.”

“Eh, could be better…” Muttered Keith. “I don’t think your Papa likes me very much…”

Lance shrugged. “My papa is just protective of me. He loves his family a lot and just wants us all to be safe. Selkies and humans haven’t always had the best relationships in the past.”

“Yeah, I’ve read about the domestic abuse and kidnappings…” He muttered.

Lance shrugged again and moved a little closer to him. “Yeah… Selkies really do love humans and enjoy being around them. You’re so different and strange. You’re fun creatures and we all really do like humans… We just… After everything that has happened between our species we are cautious of you.”

“Are you cautious of me?” Asked Keith.

Lance shook his head. “Not really. You’re really nice. You’ve always been nice to me and have always been trying to accommodate for me. Which is really, really nice. Besides, I was the one that came to you. I chose you. I wanted to be your familiar.”

Keith smiled slightly when Lance said that. “Thanks… I can understand why your papa would be worried about you. I mean, Selkies are amazing creatures.”

“Aw, you think I’m amazing.” Cooed Lance as he poked Keith’s cheek.

Keith rolled his eyes and lightly batted Lance’s hand away. “Stop is. You’re pretty amazing, but let’s face it. You kind of just act like a seal, scream and flop around.”

“You say that like it isn’t amazing.” Said Lance with a huff. “I’m pretty sure that lots of humans would love to just be a seal and scream and flop around.”

“Hmm, maybe?” Keith yawned and tried to make himself comfortable enough to sleep. “Well, I'm tired… And I still need to go around and do more stocktake or whatever the hell Shiro wants me to do.”

Lance nodded and pulled his seal skin back on. Once he was back to looking like a seal he snuggled up to Lance’s side and made a very pleased sound. Keith smiled slightly and gently rubbed Lance’s side. He was soft and kind of squishy in this form. It was kind of nice… Though he was kind of damp which Keith wasn’t the biggest fan of. But it was nice enough and Keith quickly fell asleep.

***

Later on that night, Lance woke up when he heard his papa walking around outside the door. Lance very carefully wiggled away from Keith and took off his seal skin to investigate. He walked out and saw his papa looking at bottles of rum in his kitchen.

“Papa?”

The older man looked over at his son and smiled a little. “Ah, Lance mi hijo. Want to sit outside and have a drink with your old man?”

Lance’s eyes lit up. His papa hadn’t offered him alcohol before. “Really? I’m old enough?”

“Yep. Grab the lantern and come with me.”

Lance happily did as he was told and grabbed the lantern. When they got outside his papa lit it and the two of them walked to one of the sandy hills a few feet away from the house. They made themselves comfortable with the lantern between them. Lance smiled happily and watched as his papa drank from the bottle before he passed it to Lance. 

Before his old man said anything, Lance took a huge mouthful and swallowed. “...” Lance coughed and spluttered. “Argh! It burns!”

His old man laughed. “Yeah, I was going to say to pace yourself.”

Lance pouted and put the bottle down. He stuck his tongue out and pouted. “Alcohol is strong…”

“Yeah, it is.” His papa took another mouthful and sighed. “So… You really like him, huh?”

“Keith? Yeah. I like Keith.” Said Lance. “He has been really nice to me ever since I’ve met him.”

“Have you told him about your pearls yet?”

“... I don’t think he needs to know about that.”

“If you trust him then why don’t you tell him?”

Lance shrugged as he pulled his knees up to his chest. “Humans are greedy things. Mama and everyone in the pod has always warned me about the greed of humans… They lure us in with their sweet words and when we’re caught up they will take our seal skins and make us cry to take our pearls…”

“Is that why you haven’t told him about your pearls?”

“A little… Keith has been really nice to me, but if he sees my pearls and gets greedy…” Lance sighed and felt bad. It wasn’t like he didn’t trust Keith, but Lance had grown up with hundreds of horror stories. Humans could be very greedy, and he didn’t want Keith to turn out to be a greedy human. He wanted Keith to stay nice. “B-but papa, you ended up being nice. You didn’t try to keep mama away from us when you found out she could cry pearls.”

The older man sighed and shrugged. “I guess… But remember, I’m not like most humans. I don’t have any need for pearls other than as a reminder of your mother… I miss her… How is she and the rest of the family?” 

Lance grinned. “Mama is doing well. She likes taking care of her grandkids. Sylvio and Nadia are always so happy when they get to play with mama. Luis and Lisa are still going strong and love those pups of theirs… Marco is still single, but he’s enjoying the bachelor life. Veronica is pretty sure she’s a lesbian and kind of almost murdered the beach master last breeding season when he approached her… Rachel still likes annoying sharks by pulling their fins and swimming away.”

“She’s not doing that to whales anymore?”

“Not since she got punted into the air by a very annoyed orca.”

His papa laughed and grinned. “Yeah, that sounds like Rachel… Though she should probably leave the sharks alone. You don’t tangle with them for fun.”

“I know. Mama keeps scolding her for it.” Lance took the bottle of rum and took a small sip. It still burned his throat, but it made him feel warm. “Papa? Why don’t you like wicche’s?”

“... They are greedy.” He said. “They don’t respect nature and are always trying to control it… And that’s not even mentioning forcing magical beings into servitude. You’re not meant to belong to anyone. You belong to the sea, like every other Selkie… Seeing you being forced onto land but him it’s… It’s distressing.”

Lance sighed and sipped the rum some more. It was burning but he did like how warm it made him feel. “Papa, Keith isn’t like that. He hasn’t forced me to do anything I didn’t want to… Well, he has had to drag me out of bed a few times… But that wasn’t so bad. Really… I was just being lazy and he needed help with stuff.”

“Hmm…”

“And he’s so dedicated to his work.” Said Lance. “Keith has ambitions. He wants to perfect his arcane magic stuff… I think he wants to be a Master arcane weapon’s master? I think he would be good at it. He gave me a knife.”

“He gave you a knife?”

“Yeah, it’s small and kind of wonky because it was a practice piece, but I like it… left it at home though…”

“Hmm…” His old man drank some more while Lance sighed and randomly flexed his toes in the soft sand.

“He has really pretty eyes too.”

His papa almost choked on his rum. “E-excuse me?”

Lance shrugged. “Keith has pretty eyes, and his hair is really pretty and dark… It looks soft and reminds me of Veronica’s hair when it’s dry.” He sighed and sipped some more rum. “Keith’s eyes just light and glow a little when he casts magic. It’s so pretty… I like watching Keith work. I could watch him for hours, even if he isn’t really doing anything.” He sighed. “Papa, I think I really like Keith… Like, I think I like-like him, but I’m scared because of the stories… What do you think papa?”

The older man thought for a moment, took a quick swing from the rum bottle, then took a much longer, slower drink. He easily put away half the bottle by himself. “... So you’re gay?”

“Um… I like girls too.” Said Lance quietly. “I just think Keith is really, really pretty and I like how pretty he is…”

“Okay… Well, you might not actually like him. You might just like how he looks.” Said his papa. “Just… Just think about it. You don’t really know too much about this Keith guy, do you? You’re probably just crushing on him… Also Selkies tend to like pretty things, right? You and Rachel fought for an hour over those abalone shells.”

“They were pretty and I saw them first!” Whined Lance. He sighed loudly and lied back in the sand. The stars looked nice this evening. “... I think Keith is pretty and he’s amazing… Why did you fall for mama?”

“Well… When I first saw you mama, she was wearing her seal skin and sunning herself. I’ve always liked seals… She looked like she had some fishing line wrapped around her fin. It took a bit of time and some coaxing on my part, but she let me free her and didn’t try to bite me. It was nice.” He sighed. “Took a bit of time before she took off her seal skin and showed me she was a selkie. She was a cute seal, but she was a stunning woman.”

“... Keith looks stunning to me.”

“Just be careful around him.” Said his papa. “Lance, you’re a very trusting young man, and you’re easily infatuated with things… I personally don’t trust Keith and the insatiable greed of wicches. I don’t want you to get hurt. You’re mi hijo. I want you to live a safe and happy life. You being taken from the ocean, your home… Even if it is your choice, it’s a horrible thing.”

Lance shrugged. “I know papa… But please be nice to Keith. He has been nothing but nice to me ever since I’ve met him. Keith is a good man.”

“If he was such a good man you wouldn’t be worried about your pearls.”

“... I’ll tell him soon. I um… I just want to make sure he’s not the kind of guy that will steal my skin and lock me away when he gets greedy.” He said quietly. Lance pointed up at the stars. “Papa? What’s that constellation?”

He looked up and squinted his eyes. “Hmm? Ah, the Sea Wyvern. With its arms outstretched they are always flying North. One of the only dragons that help fishermen. That dragon.”

For the next few hours the two McClains shared the bottle of rum while talking about the constellations. Lance enjoyed listening to his papa talk on and on about the stars. His papa could navigate using them. It was second nature. Lance could do it too, but not nearly as well as his papa.

When the rum bottle had run empty and the lantern had started to flicker, the two of them went back inside. His papa heading to his bed, and Lance going back to his sandy room. Keith was still asleep on the soft, dry sand. It made Lance smile as he walked over to him and kneeled down next to him. Keith looked peaceful when he slept. He’d never seen Keith sleeping when they were back home. Lance couldn’t be bothered to climb up to Keith’s loft when he was asleep.

Lance smiled and pulled on his seal skin before he snuggled up next to Keith. Keith was warm and he liked it. Keith was so nice and warm. Probably because he was a fire wicche. That was good. At least Lance knew he wouldn’t get cold any time soon. He closed his eyes when he felt Keith move next to him, and Keith had thrown his arm over him. Lance made a small happy noise and snuggled a little closer to his wicche. He really, really liked Keith.


	9. Sea and sand

The next day Keith was back to taking stock of magical weapons. There weren’t many houses and he was pretty much done by the middle of the afternoon. When he was done he decided to walk along the beach. He hadn’t actually been to the beach before, and thought he might as well look at it for a bit to see what it was all about.

If Keith was honest, beaches smelled awful. It smelled like stale farts, dead fish, and salt. Also, sand sucked. He already hated it from his experiences walking through deserts, but this was too much.

He took his shoes off and walked along the sand. He really didn’t like it. The beach was horrible. He didn’t know why people wanted to go to the beach for anything other than to catch fish. Even then, he still didn’t understand why anyone would want to live near the sea. This was just… He didn’t get it.

He heard a loud splash and looked over to see Lance pulling himself out of the water. Lance shook his head and snorted a few times. Once he had finished snorting, Lance shoved his face into the sand to eat something. Keith watched as Lance went from being a soft blubber ball, into a cringing mess that looked like he just ate a lemon. Possibly because whatever he ate was covered in sand. He saw Lance hacking up a mouthful of sand. Once he looked like he was okay, he shoved his face back in the sand again.

Keith rolled his eyes and reluctantly walked over to Lance to see what he was doing. He got there just in time to see Lance spitting up more sand. “Why do you do this to yourself?” He asked.

“Brah!”

“I still don’t speak seal.”

Lance huffed and flattened out on the sand. He looked kind of grumpy, but not actually upset in any way. He seemed just a little grouchy. Eating sand probably would make anyone grouchy. Keith just sighed and sat next to him.

“So… How is the ocean? Still wet, I take it?”

Lance nodded and rolled onto his side. “Gaaaah!” He slapped his belly a few times.

“I assumed that means you ate something when you were out there.” He sighed a little and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve finished doing what I need to do here… So we can technically go home now…”

“... RAAAAAAAA?!”

Keith covered his ears. “Holy fuck! I just said we can. Not that we would… Shit… Just… We’ll go at the end of the week. Should give you enough time to get what you need to make your sleeping area feel more like home.”

Lance narrowed his eyes at him for a few seconds before he flopped back down and huffed. He was probably angry at him for leaving the ocean. They were just visiting after all. It made Keith feel guilty. Maybe Lance’s dad was right? Maybe Lance would be happier if they severed their bond so he could go back to the ocean?

“... If you want to stay here I don’t mind.” Said Keith. “I’m not going to make you come back to my house if you like living here better.”

Lance glared at him for a moment before he sat up and took off his seal skin. “What are you talking about? I want to go with you. I wouldn’t have reached out to become your familiar if I didn’t want to go with you in the first place… Are you tired of me? Is it because I’m a selkie?”

“Wait, what?” Keith was confused. “No, I like you Lance, I just don’t know if I can make you happy living with me… You seem happier here than at my place so…”

Lance huffed in annoyance. “I’m happy because I’m able to see my papa again and I get to play around on the beach and stuff. It’s fun… Don’t you like it? The beach is fun. You’re walking along the beach, right? You like it?”

“I um… Kind of? The beach is very… Sandy…” Keith didn’t have the heart to tell Lance that he thought the beach was a weird and smelly place.

Lance just nodded along and frowned. “Come somewhere with me?”

“Um, okay?”

Lance stood up, dusted some sand off himself and tied his seal skin around his hips like a skirt. He helped Keith to his feet and walked along the beach with him until they got to the rockpools. Lance crouched down and swirled his finger around in the water. A tiny crab got caught up in the swirls.

“When I was a pup, I used to love playing around the rockpools.” Said Lance. “It was… It was fun. I liked being alone from everyone else growing up from time to time… Pups are very energetic. But we like our peace just as much as we like being loud. My mama would usually find me either at rockpool’s or making sandcastles on the beach. What did you do when you were young and wanted to be alone?”

Keith sighed and crouched next to him. They were going to have his talk. “Lance I… I don’t have parents…”

“Yes you do. Everyone has parents.”

“Not me…” Muttered Keith. “I was born in a village that was bordering the kingdoms of Altea and Diabazeel. My father was Altean and my mother was from Diabazeel. Before a hard border was set things were fine… But when tension started to rise between the kingdoms… My mother decided it was best if she returned to her homeland to avoid people attacking us. I look more Altean so my father kept me. I was too young to make a choice. I haven’t seen her since then… And I was too small to have proper memories of her.”

“Oh…” Lance looked sad. “But your father?”

“Passed away.” Said Keith quietly. “He… He had gotten sick when I was small… And then there was a fire in a neighbours barn so he… I went to the city because I thought there would be more work there and a better chance to get food. I ended up pickpocketing things from people for a while just so I could pay to stay inside a tavern during winter.”

“Keith… I’m so sorry…”

Keith shrugged. “It’s fine. I ended up meeting Shiro and he helped me get into the wicche school and I was able to unlock my manna and well… I’m here now… So yeah. My childhood probably isn’t the same as yours.”

“That’s so sad…” Said Lance quietly. He started to rub his eyes and quickly looked away. “I… I can’t imagine not having… Oh crap!” There was a light plunking noise and Keith saw a stormy blue pearl fell into the rockpool.

“... What?” Keith picked it up and gave it a confused look. He then looked over at Lance and saw he had a few more of those stormy blue pearls in his hands. “... Did you just make this?”

“M-maybe…” Muttered Lance. “I… Selkies cry pearls…”

“Really? I haven’t read that…”

Lance shrugged and put the pearls in the water. “I… We cry different coloured pearls depending on why we are crying.”

Keith nodded and continued to look at the pear in his hand. “What does stormy blue mean?”

“It’s guilt, sadness, and sympathy.” Said Lance. “I… I’m sorry about what happened to you. I always get sad when people talk about sad things that happened in their childhood.”

“Huh… That’s interesting… Want me to put this in the water too?”

“If you want… You can keep it if you like.” Muttered Lance. “Humans like pearls, right?”

Keith shrugged. “Well yeah, but I don’t really need them. Water wicches use more pearls than I do. So while I might use them once in a while, I really don’t need them. Besides, it kind of seems a little weird using these kinds of sadness pearls in my work… Seems like it might curse something…”

Lance chuckled when he said that. “Maybe… But I’m sure you could sell them for a lot of money…”

“I get paid enough by the crown for the work that I already do.” Said Keith calmly. “I don’t need a lot of money. I have enough to live comfortably. We aren’t poor. We’re well off. If you want to keep your pearls and sell them you can. They are yours.”

“... You don’t want to keep them?”

“They are yours to keep.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah… Did you think I was going to take them?” Asked Keith.

Lance shrugged. “Well, stories about humans don’t really paint you in the best light…”

“Oh… Well I hope you don’t think that badly of me…”

“No… I think you’re different.” He held Keith’s hand and smiled. “... Do you want to come swimming with me?”

“... I can’t swim.”

Lance looked like someone just slapped him in the face and spat on his mother’s grave. “WHAT?!”

***

Lance hand managed to convince Keith to strip down to his undergarments so he could teach him how to swim. Lance wanted to pull his seal skin on, but he needed to teach Keith how to swim with his human legs. 

He was waist high in the water and slapping at it with his hands. “Come on Keith. Just walk out. It’ll be fine. I’ll keep you safe.”

Keith groaned in annoyance and slowly walked into the water. Lance couldn’t help but notice that water around Keith’s body was making steam. Maybe this was a fire wicche thing? Kind of cool though. Keith was able to get up to his knees before he looked very uncomfortable. There was a lot of steam billowing around him.

“Are you okay?” Asked Lance.

“Just fine…” Muttered Keith. “Just… Perfect…”

“... Well you need to get deeper into the water…” He held his hands out to Keith and smiled. “Come on. You’re doing really well.”

“... Water and fire wicches don’t mix.” Muttered Keith as he waved some of the steam away from his face. “Water is… You know, opposite of fire and stuff… I really don’t like it… Also there’s the whole drowning thing…”

“Those are fair reasons, but you should learn how to swim. It’s a good survival skill.” Said Lance with a grin. “All pups are born with the spirit of the ocean in their hearts. If I can’t teach you how to swim then I’m not with my weight in salt.” He reached out for Keith’s hands, gesturing for him to come towards him.

“... Fine.” Muttered Keith as he slowly walked towards Lance. When he got close to Lance, the Selkie could feel the water heating up around him. 

“... Are you okay? Do you normally make water heat up?”

Keith sighed heavily and nodded. “Yeah… I really don’t like deep bodies of water. Like, what’s down there? What’s in there? No one knows… Lakes are bad enough… Fucking lake monsters…”

Lance chuckled a little as he took Keith’s hands in his own. They were really warm. “It’s okay. I’ll be with you every step of the way. Just trust me. I’m your familiar. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“Okay I-” All the colour drained from Keith’s face and he looked sick.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something touched my ankle…”

“Probably a fish or some seaweed.” Said Lance calmly. “These things happen. It is the sea after all.”

“I guess I…” Keith squeaks and quickly turned around. “Nope!” He said as he quickly walked back to the safety of the sand. “Nope! Nope! Nope! Something touched me again! I’m not going to get murdered by a sea monster! I am done with this! The sea is evil! Humans were not meant to go into the ocean!”

Lance rolled his eyes and followed him. “Oh come on. It wasn’t that bad. The sea isn’t scary!”

“Says the selkie that lives in the ocean!”

“Okay, fair, but you have to learn to swim!” Whined Lance. “I can teach you how to swim like a seal! It’ll be fun!”

“Doubt it!”

“Ah, you’re so rude! It’ll be fun! I promise! I can teach you how to pup paddle! Easy stuff!”

Keith just shook his head and waved his hands over his body, making any sea water evaporate off of his skin. “Nope. I’m done. This is it. The ocean is yours. Goodbye.” He pulled his clothes back on and started walking back towards Lance’s father’s home.

Lance rolled his eyes, pulled his seal skin on, and quickly followed after him, barking and honking loudly. It drew some attention from the locals. They probably thought it was amusing to see a wicche getting chased by a seal along the beach. It was probably amusing from an outsider’s perspective.


	10. Family visit

Over the next few days Lance had collected a nice stack of seashells to take home. He looked very pleased with himself. Keith watched him happily sorting out his collection. He had… Flat shells, round one, cone ones… Yeah, Keith didn’t know what they were called, but Lance liked them, so it was fine.

“You got some nice shells there.” Said Keith.

Lance smiled at him. “Yeah. I thought they were pretty neat. This one’s pink!” He held up a flat shell. “It’s a flat scallop! They are pretty and so good for cutting. Mama always has a few of these around in this purse she carried around.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah…” Lance stuck his shell in the sand and flicked the sand around a bit. “Keith? Can I try to teach you how to swim again?”

Keith nervously bit his bottom lip. “I… I don’t know… Swimming out in the ocean? I… Look, I have a thing about swimming in the ocean. I don’t like deep water… I’m a fire Wicche. I channel fire manna, the opposite of water manna. We don’t really mix.”

“Is that why you make steam?”

“No, that’s because I’m nervous.” Muttered Keith. “When I get nervous my whole body heats up to the point where I can boil water…”

“Oh that’s why everything was all steamy before, right?” Asked Lance.

“Yeah…”

“What if we stick to the shallows? Would that be okay? Nothing above hip height?” Asked Lance. “I’ll be with you the whole time. Please?”

This swimming thing seemed to be really important to Lance. Of course it was. He was a selkie and his manna was aligned with water manna. That’s just how it was. Lance would love anything and everything to do with water. Hell, he probably would have a blast when it rained. He could just imagine Lance running through the rain, and pulling on his seal skin to slide through puddles. 

“Fine…” He muttered. “One more time…”

Lance grinned and started to pat at the ground. “Awesome! I’ll teach you how to otter!”

“Otter?”

“You’ll see. It’s totally easy.”

***

As it turned out the otter method involved floating on your back with your arms crossed over your chest. So against Keith’s better judgement he was back in the water. In the shallows. Floating on his back like an otter while Lance stood next to him to make sure he didn’t float away or panic. Which was nice, but the water around Keith was starting to boil.

Lance sighed and took a step back. “So… You weren’t joking about the water thing were you?”

“Why would I joke about this?” Muttered Keith.

“Can you try and calm down a little?” Asked Lance. “You’re as hot as a submarine volcano.”

“Well excuse me for being anxious.” Grumbled Keith. “I already told you that the ocean is bullshit.”

Lance sighed heavily and wadded around him. “The ocean isn’t bullshit. You don’t see me complaining about walking on land, do you?”

“The land is less bullshit then the ocean.” Muttered Keith.

Lance sighed heavily again. “You only think that because you grew up on land. The ocean is amazing. Have you ever seen a reef before? They are so beautiful and colourful. I want to show you what they look like…”

Keith hated how sad Lance sounded when he said that. Like he knew that Keith wouldn’t want to do it. Now he felt like a bad master. He still hated that term. Owning something that was one the same level of intelligence was so freaking weird to him. Things would have been so much easier if he had summoned a banana slug.

Suddenly there was a splash followed by a chipper. “Garb!”

Lance gasped. “Nadia!”

There was suddenly a lot of movement around them and Keith panicked. He sank into the water and flailed around in shock for a few seconds before he realised that he could in fact stand up. So he did. When he stood up he saw Lance holding a seal pup in his hands. The seal pup was wiggling.

Lance smiled at Keith. “Keith, this is Nadia. My niece. Nadia, this is Keith. He’s my master and I’m his familiar.” He put the pup back in the water. They looked up at Keith for a bit before they bobbed over and nudged him.

“... Um, hi?” Keith took a step back from them. “So… Are they also a selkie or are they a seal?”

“Nadia’s a selkie.” Said Lance. He quickly looked around the coast. “And if she is here then… There they are!” He started waving to a small outcropping of rocks. Keith squinted his eyes and saw two large seals lounging on a rock. There was a small seal pup bobbing around in the water near them. The largest of the seals waved at them. “That’s my brother, Luis. That’s his wife Lisa, and Silvio my nephew… Would you mind if I?”

“Go ahead.”

Lance grinned, pulled his seal skin over his head and quickly dived into the water. Nadia quickly followed behind him. As soon as the selkies were gone, Keith quickly wadded back to the shore and dried himself off again. He hated water so, so much… He really hoped Lance’s family wasn’t going to beat the crap out of him for having Lance as his familiar...

***

Lance quickly breached the water and pulled himself onto the rocks. _“Guys! You’re here!”_

 _“Tio Lance!”_ Barked the pups as they climbed all over him.

Lisa made a happy noise and lightly nuzzled his face. _“I’m glad you’re safe. You had us all worried. We thought that you might have gotten eaten by a shark. You just…”_

 _“You really worried mama.”_ Said Luis. _“We’ve been looking everywhere for you. We came here as a last resort since land was the last place we thought you would be…”_ The large seal sighed and lightly slapped Lance with his flipper. _“If you wanted to visit papa, you should have just told us. Not just swim away like a scaredy catfish.”_

 _“Scaredy catfish! Scaredy catfish! Scaredy catfish!”_ Chanted the pups.

Lance sighed. He knew that this was going to be bad. Lance kind of jumped at the chance without thinking. He wanted to get out there and just… He wanted to get out and explore land. He didn’t want to spend his whole life in the ocean. He didn’t want to upset his mama by leaving, but Lance never thought anything out.

 _“I’m not… I’m not living with papa…”_ He muttered.

 _“Tio Lance is a familiar!”_ Said Nadia with excitement.

Silvio rolled off of Lance and waddled over to Lisa. _“What’s a familiar?”_

Lisa shook her head. _“A familiar is someone who helps a wicche with their work… But the familiars a wicche usually has is something simpler, like a bird.”_

 _“Tio is a bird brain?”_ Asked Nadia.

 _“Yes.”_ Said Luis.

Lance let out an indigent sound and grumpily looked away. He could see Keith walking up to some rocks to sit on. Maybe he was watching them? He waved at Keith, but wasn’t sure if Keith could see him from the shore, or was even looking at him.

Luis followed his gaze and huffed. _“So that’s the wicche huh?”_

 _“What is his name?”_ Asked Lisa.

Lance grinned and immediately slapped at the rock. _“His name is Keith! Keith is a fire wicche! He makes weapons and other cool stuff infused with other manna and stuff to give it cool effects! He lives on a hill next to a river. It’s so cool! I can swim whenever I want!”_

 _“Can I meet the wicche?”_ Asked Silvio. _“Nadia saw them up close before me!”_

 _“Which she shouldn’t have done.”_ Said Liza as she shot Nadia a look. Nadia quickly turned from a lanky looking seal, to a round ball of concerned blubber. _“We will talk about this later.”_

Luis yawned loudly and scratched himself. _“Alright… We need to go and see your abuelo first.”_

 _“Abuelo! Abuelo! Abuelo!”_ Cheered the pups in excitement. Pups were very, very easily distracted by the next shiny thing. They jumped into the water and started calling for their parents to follow them.

The three adult seals quickly followed the pups back to the stretch of beach where the old man’s home was. The pups were so excited they pulled off their seal skins and dropped them on the sand. They almost left without them, but they quickly picked them up again when Lisa bellowed at them. Hopefully they would be on their best behaviour while they were there.

 _“You need to talk with mama soon.”_ Warned Luis. 

_“I know… I… I will soon…”_ Said Lance.


	11. Pod

Keith was so confused. Well, not that confused, but still very confused. He was sitting on the beach, surrounded by seals, which were apparently Lance’s family. The two seal pups were happily waddling around him and tugging at his robes. The smaller of the adults seals, more than likely the pups mother, gently herded the pups away from him when they tugged more aggressively on his sleeves.

He looked over at Lance’s father. He was sitting between Lance and a much, much larger seal. Must have been Lance’s older brother. They seemed happy enough. Though Keith really had no what to do. There was a lot of honking and other weird seal noises. He was so confused.

Suddenly the largest seal waddled over to Keith and made a bellowing noise at him, or them? Either way the seals paid attention, made some small honking sounds, and the big seal flopped back into the ocean and swam away.

“... Um, where are they going?” Asked Keith.

The larger of the seals around him took off their seal skin, and quickly tied it around themselves like a robe. She was quite curvy and buxom and had very wild, untamed looking brown hair. Keith had heard Lance’s father say her name earlier, but it was lost on him.

“He’s going to let their mother know that we found Lance.” She said. “By the way, my name is Lisa. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too.” Said Keith. “... Did you guys not know he became my familiar?”

“No.” Said Lisa. “One day Lance was there and he was gone… It caused a fair bit of panic in our pod.”

“Oh… Lance never mentioned… I’m so sorry.” Now Keith felt even more guilty than he did before. He didn’t mean to rip Lance away from his family. He never freaked out and said he needed to get back to the ocean to be with his family… Maybe he should just let Lance go? Sure Keith wouldn’t be able to get another familiar since was kind of a one time kind of deal spell… But Lance had a family… Keith could get a pet if he felt lonely enough...

“It’s okay.” Said Lisa. “You’ve taken good care of him by the look of it.”

“I’ve tried my best.” Said Keith quietly. “I didn’t expect him to… I didn’t expect him to be my familiar. Our manna is the opposite of each other.” No matter how many times he had said it and tried to reassure himself that it was all alright, it just didn’t sit right with him.

The pups happily honked at Lisa before they both waddled over towards Lance. The three seals made many loud noises before they quickly waddled back to the sea. One of them decided to roll on their side instead.

Lisa chuckled. “Nadia takes after her aunty Veronica… So you’re from the more central, inland parts of the world?”

“Yeah.”

“How is that working out for you?”

“It’s pretty dry.”

“I’d imagine so… Do you have a big pod?”

“A pod is like family, right?” Asked Keith. “No, it’s just me and Shiro. He’s kind of like my older brother… He also has his familiar, Adam. Adam is a phoenix. His feathers are bright red and beautiful when he’s young… But when he gets older his feathers get darker, like embers slowly going out. Then he catches fire and gets reborn as an ugly looking baby bird.”

Lisa chuckled. “Baby birds are pretty weird looking… Is that normal for a phoenix? To catch fire?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, okay… Land creatures are quite odd.”

“I could say the same for sea creatures.”

“Very true.” She looked out at her pups playing with Lance in the water and smiled. “Was Lance trying to teach you how to swim before?”

“Yeah… Fire wicches don’t mix well with water… But this kind of stuff is important to him so…” Keith sighed a little and brushed some sand off his pants as he stood up. “I’m going to give you guys some time to do family stuff… I’ll um… I’ll be around… somewhere…”

He waved goodbye to her and went on a bit of a walk. He walked away from the town and walked up a cliff to just think for a bit. The more he thought about Lance and his family the more guilty he felt. He didn’t want to break up a family. He sighed heavily and made a small fire. Being a wicche was hard.

***

After about three hours of playing with his niece and nephew, Lance had beached himself. He needed to rest. He wasn’t a young pup anymore and didn’t have the energy to keep up with them. Thankfully the pups decided they wanted Lance’s papa to toss them into the ocean from the shallows.

Lisa happily waddled over to him in her seal form and flopped down by him. _“You okay there?”_

_“Yeah… I’m just so tired… Where’s Keith?”_

_“He wanted to give you some time with your family.”_

_“Oh, that’s nice… How mad do you think mama is at me?”_

_“She is going to chase you with a clam.”_

_“... Damn it.”_ He buried his head in the sand and huffed. _“I don’t wanna get killed by the clam.”_

Lisa chuckled and looked over at her pups happily playing with their abuelo. _“She might scream at you a bit, but she’s not going to clobber you… too badly…”_

_“... Fun.”_

Suddenly there was a splash and a very chipper scream before Lance was getting crushed by his twin sister, Rachel. _“I thought you died!”_ She exclaimed.

Lance groaned in annoyance and tried to wriggle out of it. _“Why?”_

 _“Because you are a dick.”_ Said Rachel. _“You upset mama so badly. She was crying pearls for days! She’s gonna beat your ass with a clam!”_

Lance sighed and let Rachel continue to try and crush him. She wasn’t as big as him when they were in their seal form, as most female seals were smaller than their male counterparts anyway. Speaking of the males in his family… they quickly appeared with Veronica and their mama. She. Was. Pissed.

 _“LANCE!!!”_ She bellowed. _“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!”_ She couldn’t really do much in her seal form, so she nipped at his flippers and the fat around his neck. Which he deserved. She headbutted him too. _“YOU SCARED ME TO DEATH! YOU- oh hello dear.”_ She looked up at her husband who had walked back onto land with the pups quickly following him.

The old man smiled and patted her head. “The pod was pretty close by huh? You’re still as beautiful as ever.”

His mama blushed a little and took off her seal skin, tying it around her body like a toga. “Aw, you flatter me so much dear.” She quickly kissed his cheek before she grabbed Lance by the tail and dragged him back to the house. Lance just let this happen. His siblings were happily waddling after Lance and making fun of him all the way.

Once everyone got to the house they pulled their seal skins off and either tied it around themselves as skirts or togas. Lance’s papa was already pulling out the big pot to do some cooking outside.

“Marco, Rachel, you still some of the best hunters in the pod? Go and get us some fish.” He said. The two complained about just taking their skins off, but happily returned to the ocean. The pups wanted to stick around their abuelo and helped him get firewood while Lisa watched them. Luis and Veronica helped their papa bring out knives and other things to help clean the fish.

Lance attempted to sneak away, but his mama quickly stopped him. “Oh not you don’t young man!” She snapped. “What do you think you are doing? We are having a talk, right now!”

“Y-yes mama…” 

The two of them sat on the chairs in the house and she glared at him. “Luis said you’re a familiar to a fire wicche. What is this?”

Lance sunk in his chair and shrugged. “I um… You know… Stuff and things…”

“Lance!”

He shrunk down in his seat even more. “I… I um… I’m sorry… I heard a call and it was warm… It was dry… It felt like land and I… I just moved towards it and the next thing I knew I was in a room with two wicches looking at me. Keith-”

“Who?”

“The fire wicche that summoned me.” Said Lance. “Keith did some blessing on me that did nothing because I could already speak and understand him and I… I was his familiar… He took care of me, he has been taking care of me.”

“And where is this wicche now?” She did not sound happy at all.

“Um… Probably around the village somewhere…” Muttered Lance as he nervously played with the edge of his seal skin. “He said he wanted to give me time to be with my family… I um… I don’t think he really knew that I got pulled away from you guys so suddenly… I think he feels bad…”

“He better feel bad!” She snapped. “How dare he take you from our pod! Who does he think he is? Damn wicches! Those people are nothing but trouble! Just as bad as the bastards that steal and burn selkie skins!”

“Keith isn’t like that!” Said Lance quickly. “He’s been nothing but kind to me since we first met! He’s been trying really hard to make sure I’m comfortable at his house… Sure we don’t get a lot of fish, but Keith feeds me chicken instead and it tastes pretty similar! A-and you’ve never met him… He’s really nice… He’s hardly an adult…”

His mama was still not impressed. “I don’t care if he is an adult or not. What kind of monster would keep any creature that shows high levels of intelligence and emotion as a glorified pet? He should have let you go immediately! He-”

“Keith is not a bad person!” Snapped Lance. “And he didn’t force me to be his familiar! I was tired of being in the pod mama! The pod rotates between three different islands all year! I want to explore! I want to see the world! I heard Keith reaching out and asking if someone would like to be with him and I… I chose to go to him… I left the pod! Keith didn’t take me away!”

His mama was quiet. She looked too shocked to hear that Lance actually wanted to leave the pod. It probably broke her heart. It upset Lance too. He didn’t want to upset anyone and just wanted to live his life. Being Keith’s familiar had just been convenient for him. 

“I like Keith mama…” Said Lance quietly. “He’s so nice to me and hardly asks me to do anything for him… I’ve already seen so many strange and interesting things while on land and I… I want to stay with him mama. I want to be his familiar… You’ll like him too if you meet him… Papa doesn’t like Keith very much, but he’s warming up to him, I think? Maybe… I hope so...”

“... I don’t want someone to take advantage of you.” Said his mama quietly. “You’re so young and most people… They don’t…”

“... It worked out with you and papa…”

“Your papa didn’t summon me and keep me like a pet.” She reminded him.

“... Keith doesn’t treat me like a pet.” Muttered Lance. Keith was sweet to him, and he put up with his antics when he didn’t want to do human things and just wanted to be a fat seal… and he… Lance had noticed that Keith was an incredibly lonely man. He didn’t have a pod. It was literally just the two of them. Shiro dropped by every now and then with Adam, but that was it.

He kind of felt pity for Keith. He didn’t get to grow up the same way he did, surrounded by loved ones. Everyone close to Keith had disappeared at a young age. The only one that had been consistent for him seemed to be Shiro, but even then… He didn’t drop by nearly as enough as Lance would expect family to visit. If Lance rejected Keith as his Master and went back to the ocean, then Keith would be lonely again.

“Keith’s never treated me like a pet or someone lesser than him.” Said Lance a little louder. “He’s treated me as an equal and is always trying to make sure I’m okay. Keith was the one that brought me here because I was starting to get homesick.”

“Lance… If you’re starting to get homesick, then you-”

“I’m not going back to the ocean.” Said Lance. “If I leave, then Keith’s going to be lonely… He lives away from the rest of everyone and people don’t visit him often. He seems happy when I’m around and I… I really like him mama…” He almost felt ashamed to say that he liked someone more than his pod. He liked Keith’s pretty long hair and pretty eyes… And surprisingly soft looking lips...

“Lance…”

“I care about him mama… Maybe I even care about him the same way you care about papa… I mean, I showed him my pearls and he didn’t want them. He said they were mine mama. He didn’t want me to cry for pearls…”

His mama seemed to be swayed slightly, but Lance doubted she was fully swayed just yet. “Lance… You should still come back to the ocean… Your pod-”

“Is still functioning without me.” Said Lance. “And it takes a little while, but I can come down to the beach to have some time with papa… I can come down and spend time with you guys when you usually come down...”

His mama sighed and left it for now. Lance didn’t really know what to do, so he just left the house and helped the rest of his family cook. Eventually mama came out of the house and helped with the cooking too. She didn’t look over at him and gave him space. She was probably thinking about what he said.

Eventually when the sun dipped and the fish was bubbling away in the pot, Keith cautiously came back. Lance grinned at him and waved. The fire wicche looked nervous but moved closer to the group by the fire.

“Um… Hi...” He said nervously.

“Everyone, this is Keith.” Said Lance. “He’s my master. His official title is Lesser arcane weapons master. Right?”

Keith nodded and smiled at him. “Yeah, That’s right.” He looked over at Lance’s papa. “Um… So should I start thinking about finding my own food?”

“Yes.”

“... Oh… Okay.”

“I’m joking. Just sit down and I’ll get you a bowl.” He said.

Keith nodded and sat on the ground a little away from everyone else. Lance didn’t like this and quickly moved to sit by him. “Hey… Where did you go?”

“Just on the cliff.” Keith gestured to the cliff. “I made myself a little fire and um… I had time to think about stuff.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah…”

“... Are you cold? Do you want to sit closer to the fire?” Asked Lance.

Keith shook his head. “I’m good.” He rubbed his hands together for a few seconds before smoke started to seep out between his fingers. When he opened his hands and cupped in his hands was a bright orange flame. “I can keep myself warm.”

“That’s so cool!” Said Silvio as he quickly ran over to them. Nadia quickly followed him. “How do you do that?” 

Keith looked a little shocked and clapped his hands shut, quickly putting out the flame. “Um… Well, there are five main types of manna in the world that all creatures have; earth, water, fire, air, and spirit. There are variations of these main five which are balanced mixes of different manna. Like, if someone has perfect balance of fire and earth manna, they could manipulate molten metal. Balanced water and air can control lightning… Spirit manna is a whole other ball game and that manna can either be positive or negative. Positive spirit manna is more commonly referred to as light manna and negative spirit manna is commonly known as dark manna.”

“Is dark manna bad?” Asked Nadia.

“Manna is neither good nor evil.” Said Keith. “It all depends on the user.”

“So how do you do fire stuff?” Asked Silvio. “Can you make another fire?”

Keith nodded and put his hands together. “For a fire wicche it’s easier for us to make fire if we have some friction. If I concentrate and channel my manna to my hands I can rub them together and…” Keith quickly rubbed his hands together until smoke seeped out from between his fingers again and he had another fire in his palms.

The selkie pups watched the fire burning with fascination. “Doesn’t it hurt?” Asked Nadia. “I’ve burnt my mouth before and that was no fun.”

Keith smiled a little and carefully moved the flame ball from one palm to another. “Wicche’s are special. When our powers manifest we gain an immunity or something special. We consider that a blessing from the goddess that has allowed us to have these powers. Fire wicches are fireproof.”

“What about other whicces?” Asked Silvio, his eyes all lit up with excitement.

“Well, water wicches can’t drown.” Said Keith. “Air wicches can hover in the air for short periods of time, spirit wicches can see in the dark, and earth wicches are incredibly strong. Selkie’s, like you two, are naturally born with high levels of water manna in you.”

“Do you think we could be water wicches?” Asked Silvio.

Keith shrugged. “I’ve only ever known humans being able to become wicches… But maybe you could use magic? I’m not sure. I’m still young and don’t know a lot.”

That answer seemed to satisfy Silvio and the two pups continued to ask Keith questions, which he happily answered. Lance couldn’t help but grin. Keith was getting along really, really well with them. He glanced over at the rest of his family. Lisa and Luis were keeping a close eye on them, which was understandable. His mama kept looking over at them. She still seemed conflicted about Keith. Hopefully they could get along. He really wanted them to.


	12. Guilt

Lance was kind of confused. When Lance and his family went to sleep that night, his papa and mama obviously shared a bed while everyone else shared the sandy room with Lance and Keith, but Keith wasn’t there. He said he wanted to do a fire wicche ritual that could only be done at night, but he had never mentioned it before.

So there Lance was, in his seal form, squished between Marco and Veronica. Rachel had squicked herself in the corner and Luis and Lisa were lying with their children huddled between them. He sighed a little as he scratched his stomach with his flippers.

He wanted to see Keith. Keith was out there on the beach, alone, doing stuff. He sighed and wriggled out of his skin. He very carefully looked around to make sure that no one else was awake and he very carefully sneaked out of the house. He saw a fire burning far away along the edge of the beach, close to the cliff.

Lance tied his seal skin around his body and made his way over to it. He found Keith sleeping by the fire. Not doing his supposed ritual. He pouted and sat near him. He didn’t understand why Keith didn’t come back when he was sleepy. Did he not like his family? He thought that Keith was getting along pretty well with his family.

Keith kind of looked pretty with his face dancing in the firelight. His skin was really pale, but he was still so warm. He liked that warmth. Lance reached over and gently shook Keith’s arm. “Keith? Are you okay?”

The wicche jumped a little in surprise and looked up at Lance. He let out a quick sigh of relief. “Oh, it’s just you…”

“Yeah, of course it’s just me.” He sat down next to Keith as he sat up. “Why are you out here?”

“... Ritual stuff.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…”

“What kind of ritual?”

“Just… fire stuff…”

“Do you not like my pod?”

Keith looked at Lance in confusion. “What? Why would you say that?”

“You didn’t come to bed…”

The man sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, it isn’t that I don’t like your family, I think they are really cool… You’re lucky having such a big, loving family and I don’t want to get in the way of you guys having family time…” He picked up a stick and poked at the fire. “Do you prefer living in the ocean?”

“Well yeah, of course I do.” Said Lance. “I’m a selkie. The ocean is my own.”

“I thought as much…” Muttered Keith. He let out a frustrated groan. “Look, do you want you to keep being my familiar or you want to stay with your family? Family is important and I don’t want to keep you away from them.”

“... I like being your familiar.” Said Lance quietly. “I made the choice to be here. I want to be here… Have you been talking to my mama?”

“No… She hates me, doesn’t she?” Asked Keith quietly. He looked defeated. Which really upset Lance.

“Well don’t listen to her! I want to be your familiar! I like being your familiar! You make me really happy and you’re showing me all kinds of cool land stuff! You’re making me as comfortable as possible! I want to stay with you!”

“But you don’t have to stay with me!” Said Keith quickly. “You’re a higher, more intelligent magical creature than most… If you don’t like me, you can just leave me if you want to… And let’s face it, you’re just with me because of a spell, a spell that you are weak to… I’ll be fine if you want to go back to the sea with your family. I completely understand. I’m used to being alone.”

Lance hugged Keith tightly, making him flail slightly at the sudden movement. “Keith… Don’t try and tell me what I need to do. I’ve been told what I need to do my whole life… Don’t take your seal skin off, stay away from humans, leave the sharks alone, never go onto the mainland, stay in your seal skin when humans are around… I made this decision myself.”

“... Aren’t I meant to be telling you what to do anyway?” Asked Keith quietly. “I’m technically your master…”

“Yeah, but we are talking about my feelings now.” Whined Lance. “I just want everyone to treat me like an adult for once… Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I can’t make choices on my own…”

Keith was quiet for a moment before he sighed and peeled himself away from Lance. “You smell like fish…”

“I know I do…”

“You can make your own choices…” Said Keith. “I just don’t want you to choose me over your family… Family is more important than being a familiar to a wicche...”

“... Can you get another familiar?” Asked Lance quietly.

Keith was silent for a moment before he nodded. “Yes, but it’s complicated… When a wicche summons a familiar it’s meant to be for life… If our familiar dies then we can summon another one but our manna is affected by the death of our familiar… If we cause their death our manna can become tainted and we’re less likely to get a familiar that really works well with us. If they died saving us or a peaceful death, then we might attract a more powerful familiar next time…”

“And if your familiar just leaves?”

“...”

“Keith?”

“Then I just don’t get to have another familiar until you pass away.” Said Keith quietly. “If I try to summon another one then I would summon you again… But it’s okay. If you want to stay with your family, I am good at being alone. I’m used to it… I can get a dog or something…”

Lance was kind of shocked. He didn’t understand why Keith was so adamant about him going back with his pod. “But if I go back with them, then you’ll be all alone, right?”

Keith shrugged. “It’s fine. Really…” 

There seemed to be more to what Keith was saying then he was letting on. Lance wanted to know. “Keith… You know you can tell me, right? I’m your familiar. I want to be able to help you any way I can. Not just with spells. I want to help you smile. Share things with me…”

“...” Keith poked at the fire a few times with a stick. “When I first met Shiro and Adam… I didn’t really know much about familiars before I became a wicche. I kind of just thought that I would end up living in some tower somewhere… I didn’t really know how to get a familiar. I just thought that I would just randomly find an animal and just ask them to be my familiar… I didn’t learn about the familiar spell until my second year of study. I was surprised and kind of happy, but mostly scared…”

“Scared? Why?”

“I’m an orphan, and used to be a thief.” Said Keith. “I was worried that my manna would be bad and I’d either only attract something like an ant or… nothing at all… But Shiro did help me out with that. Apparently manna is more affected by emotions and intent. I stole so I wouldn’t die. I didn’t do it because I was greedy or wanted to. I did it because I had to survive...” He sighed sadly.

Lance frowned and held Keith’s hand, gently squeezing. “Keith… You’re not a bad person. Your manna was really warm and comforting.”

“Well it is now.” Said Keith. “But when I was younger… I was really worried that no one would want to be my familiar, but I was still excited by the idea that something out there might actually want to be my familiar… I don’t know…” He sighed and waved the stick through the flames and created a small fire snake curl and follow the stick. “But now I have you and… I didn’t want to pull anyone away from their family… I thought that my familiar would have been a wild animal, not someone with a family.”

“Keith… Are you disappointed in me?”

The wicche shook his head. “No I’m not disappointed in you at all. I was more surprised than anything… I’m happy that you’re my familiar. Would have been hard to help you up the hill all the time if you didn’t have legs.” They both had a good chuckle about that.

Lance smiled at Keith and gently squeezed his hand. “Keith… I’m happy that you’re my master, or whatever you want to call it. I love my pod, and yeah, I haven’t heard many good things about wicches, or humans for that matter, but my papa is a good person, and he’s human. I’m more than willing to give humans a chance… And what I have seen with the way Shiro and Adam interact they are like a pod too… So, I consider us our own little pod too.”

“Are you sure?” Asked Keith. “I… I don’t want you to be forced into this… I don’t want to force anyone to do what they don’t want to do. I-”

Lance was tired of his rambling, so he pulled his seal skin on and gracefully flopped on top of him. Keith flailed and attempted to push Lance off of himself, but Lance was not having it. He was done with this conversation. He didn’t want Keith to feel guilty about him being his familiar. He didn’t want Keith to feel like he had taken him away from his family. He hadn’t. Lance wanted to be there. He wished that someone would believe that he wanted to be with him. Well, time for distractions.

***

Keith was getting crushed to death by Lance. He was one hell of a heavy seal. Then again, all seals were pretty freaking heavy. He felt like Lance was trying to squeeze his insides out. He managed to shuffle mostly out from under the selkie, but his legs were still trapped. At least he could breathe now.

He leavered himself up onto his elbows and looked down and the grumpy seal that was resting his head on his stomach. Lance huffed and snapped at him when Keith tried to push him off. It looked like he was stuck with Lance for the moment.

“You’re an asshole. You know that right?”

“Brragh!”

“Why are you so heavy?”

Lance’s jaw dropped in shock. “Arrr? Brrra! Arragh raah barrragh!”

Keith couldn’t help but smirk. “What? You don’t like being called heavy? Well you are, You’re a heavy, but I guess you’re not heavy for a seal.”

Lance huffed some more and decided to bite the front of Keith’s robes. “Gragh!”

Keith rolled his eyes and lightly slapped his forehead. “Well you are. No point in trying to hide that you’re fat.”

Lance continued to huff, puffed and nibbled on his robe some more. He still looked kind of mad about being called fat, but he didn’t look too upset by it. He almost had a playful glint in his eyes. He tugged one more time on his robes before he seemingly gave up and rested his head on Keith’s stomach again.

Keith sighed and flopped back onto the sand. He looked up at the stars. There were so many… Keith himself was never good at astrology and didn’t know much in the way of that stuff. Most of it was fortune telling stuff and personality readings.

“Lance?”

“Braaap?”

“... If you really still want to be my familiar, I’m okay with that… But if you ever want to go back to the sea I’ll understand.”

“... Meerp…” Lance suddenly wriggled up Keith’s body and started to crush him again.

“Ack! Okay! I get it! You want to do this! Stop trying to crush me!”

“Brap!”

Keith sighed and patted Lance’s head. “I get it. I’ll stop talking about it. Just… Let me feel my legs again… Please…”

Lance glared at him for a moment before he rolled off of Keith’s legs. “Meerph…”

Keith groaned a little as he stretched his legs and tried to get the feeling back into his legs. They were all tingly now. He looked down at Lance, who was looking up at him. He sighed a little and gave Lance a few pats. The seal made some very happy sounds and snuggled closer to him. It made Keith smile. If Lance decided to go back to the ocean someday he would probably miss just being around the selkie like this a lot.

He picked up a stick and made another fire snake with the flames. That seemed to catch Lance’s interest and he noticed that the selkie’s face was following the movement of the snake. It gave him an idea. He quickly flicked his wrist and the snake changed form into a bird. Lance let out a surprised gasp and made excited sounds.

“You like that, huh?” Asked Keith. “What about… This?” He changed the shape of the bird into a starfish and then a shell. He gauged Lance’s excitement by how quickly he would slap the sand with his flippers. He really seemed to like it when he made an octopus. 

Keith then had a go at making a seal. He then made it roll around from right to left, and made it shrink into a ball and made it go long again. Just like he had seen Lance do some many times. It seemed to give Lance a lot of joy to see it. So Keith spent most of the night making little flame animals for Lance until they both got tired and fell asleep on the beach.


	13. Home again

Eventually Lance and Keith needed to head back inland and back to Keith’s home. Of course, Lance’s family were all hugging him and begging him to come back to the ocean with them. But Lance stood his ground and said that he was a familiar now, and he would go wherever his wicche went. Keith still felt a little guilty about it, but he knew that this was Lance’s decision to make.

After what seemed like forever his family reluctantly relented and let them go. Lance looked much more energized as they walked back. Maybe Keith should consider coming to the ocean at least once a year for Lance’s sake? He needed to keep his familiar healthy after all.

“Man, that was nice.” Said Lance. “I’ll miss that salty sea air.”

“Yeah, it is something.” Said Keith calmly. “... Are you sure that this is-”

“I will not hesitate to turn into a seal and flatten you.”

“... Shutting up now…”

***

They eventually got home and Lance happily flopped down onto his bed. “Ah, home sweet home. I missed this place.”

Keith chuckled and hung up his robe on a hook. “Oh really now?”

“Yeah, smells like smoke and wood. I like it.”

Keith smiled when he heard that and went about starting a fire and checking his food. He did have some bread in the cupboard but wasn’t sure if it was mouldy or not. It had a small mould spot on it, which annoyed Keith, but he could deal with that. It was pretty late in the evening. He could go out and get some food from the town after he dropped off his documents at Shiro’s place. He had some dried meat and the small vegetable garden out the back had some vegetables he could use… Though it was going to have to be soup.

He sat down and took off his shoes, tipping out some of the sand that got stuck in them. While he got comfortable he watched Lance happily take out the shells be brought from the beach and decorated around his sleeping area. He looked very pleased with himself. 

“Did you get enough shells?” Asked Keith.

Lance shook his head. “You can never have enough shells. But this will do for now.” 

“Right… So um, I have some documentation to hand into Shiro tomorrow, and then food to get… Want to come with me?”

Lance grinned and quickly nodded. “Yeah. I’d love to. What are we having for dinner?”

“Soup.”

“Nice.”

***

The next day Lance and Keith made their way back to Shiro’s place. Once again Lance was very vocal about how stairs were the devil and how they were the bane of his existence. He also didn’t very much appreciate that Keith wasn’t paying any attention to him as he complained. 

Shiro happily greeted the duo and let them in. He was more than happy to make them some tea as they talked about their stay in Saltwall. Keith kept it relatively brief. He talked about the magical weapons that were there and how they managed to actually meet Lance’s father.

That seemed to surprise Shiro a lot. He probably assumed that Lance came from somewhere much, much further away than Saltwall. Lance didn’t mind. As far as he knew it wasn’t much of a secret or anything. No one told him not to tell them where he was from.

As they talked Lance looked over at Adam. The phoenix was in human form, but looked a little poorly. So while the wicche’s were talking, Lance walked over to him. “Hey, you okay?”

Adam looked up at him and shrugged. “Eh, I’m a little under the weather, but I’m okay. I think I caught a little cold. Shiro is taking care of me, but you know, not like this will kill me. I’ll just turn to ash and get reborn.”

“... You’re okay with dying?”

“Not really, but that’s the nature of the phoenix.” Muttered Adam. He sneezed and rubbed his nose in annoyance. “Stupid fucking cold…”

“Okay…” Lance looked over at the wicche’s and then back at Adam. “Hey, Adam? Can I talk to you about something?”

“Hmm? Sure. What’s up?”

“Um… So what’s your relationship with Shiro?”

“Oh?”

Lance shrugged. “I don’t really know what familiars can and can’t do. Like, I’m a selkie. We breed with humans quite often and we do develop feelings for them… I like Keith a lot and I just want to know if I’m allowed to do anything?”

Adam seemed surprised for a moment before he chuckled. “Shiro and I are lovers. It’s not uncommon for a high level magical creature, who is a familiar to a wicche, to become that wicche’s lover. If the familiar is something like a cat or a dog, that’s a different matter. Those creatures, by law can’t consent to the sexual aspects of a romantic relationship. Abusing a familiar in such a way usually results in the death of the wicche.”

“... Right.” He glanced over at Keith. The man was showing Shiro some clams. “So he wouldn’t feel bad about me showing some romantic interest in him?”

Adam shrugged. “He’ll take it the same way anyone else takes someone showing interest in them. He might reject you because you’re his familiar, but that is his choice.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Said Lance. “I just wanted to know if that was an option for us, since I really kind of think I like him a fair bit… Might be something. Might be nothing.”

“Hmmm, if you say so.” Adam sneezed again and pouted. “Stupid fucking cold… Wish I’d just die and get it over with already…”

Shiro looked over at them. “Do you need another tonic?” He asked Adam.

“... Yes.”

The light wicche went to their shelf and grabbed a green bottle. He walked over to Adam and handed it to him. “Here. This should help with your sniffles.”

“They aren’t sniffles…” Muttered Adam. He quickly downed the tonic and pulled a face. “Gross… I’m going to change into my phoenix form now… Too much effort to look human.” There was a quick puff of smoke and on the chair was a poorly looking bird. Their feathers looked a little unkempt and kind of ratty.

Shiro sighed and placed Adam in a metal bowl that had a little bit of sawdust in the bottom of it on the coffee table. “You just rest up there.”

“Caaaaaaw…” Grumbled Adam.

Lance crouched down next to the chicken sized bird and gently patted him. “Why the sawdust?”

“It’s just a safety precaution.” Said Shiro. “When Adam gets sick he prefers to rest in here. If he suddenly passed away he will suddenly catch fire and burn to ashes. I don’t want him to set everything on fire, and with the high sides of the bowl his ashes won’t spill out or get blown away… A phoenix will die if their ashes get blown away in the wind. They need their ashes to collect in one place to be born again.”

“Oh, okay.” Lance gently patted Adam some more. He seemed to appreciate it. Lance liked Adam in his bird form, a lot better than seagulls. Those guys were assholes. Stinky, screechy, flapping assholes.

“Well we should go.” Said Keith. “We need to go grocery shopping.”

“Have fun.” Said Shiro. “I’ll start sending you work later this week, and your pay for going to Saltwall.”

“Thanks. Come on Lance.” Said Keith. “Hope you get better soon Adam.”

“Caaaaw!”

The two of them ended up walking around the markets for a fair few hours. Lance didn’t really get it. Keith kept looking at all kinds of different things but didn’t seem to want anything. It was all edible, right? Just grab some stuff. It would be fine. At least that’s what he thought.

Keith did end up buying a few loaves of bread, some vegetables, and lots of meat. He was pretty sure most of that was for him. He ate a lot of chicken, and Keith bought a lot of chicken. That pleased him a lot.

They stopped by the bakery and Keith bought them both some sweet bread stuff. It was weird. Kind of flakey and buttery, but Lance loved it. It was so, so nice. Lance happily munched on it as they walked back home. He wanted more of these buttery sweet things. They were so tasty.

“Hey Keith? Can we buy more of these things?”

“They are kind of expensive.” Said Keith. “We can’t get them every day…”

“Oh, okay… Maybe once a week?”

“More like once a month…”

“Oh…”

When they got home Lance happily put away all of the dry ingredients while Keith went about hanging some sausages, cured meats, and herbs up close to the fireplace. Lance was interested in what he was doing. Human food preparation was so interesting. They had to do so many things to just eat meat. He could just eat a fish and just eat the whole thing in one go. It was easy.

Lance happily pulled his seal skin back on and acted like a lump on the floor. Now was time to relax. Walking around was good, but relaxing like this was fun. Who didn’t want to be a lazy lump on the floor?

***

Once everything was all in place Keith could take a moment to step back and relax. Well, not really. He still needed to do his laundry. His clothes were pretty stiff from the salt water. He needed to find his washboard. Keith hated washing his clothes… He might as well make a day out of it and have a bath too.

He sighed and turned around, almost tripping over Lance. “Hey! Why are you in the middle of the floor?”

Lance looked up at him, shrugged and happily rolled onto his side, closing his eyes with an almost smug look on his face. Keith rolled his eyes, but smiled fondly at him. He sat next to Lance. The selkie quickly wobbled over and rested his head against Keith’s thigh, and slapped his own belly a few times. Keith smiled and went to pat him, but stopped himself. Patting Lance was kind of demeaning.

“So… Tomorrow…”

The seal looked up at him and tilted his head. “Arrrf?”

“It’s laundry day.” Said Keith. “I need to wash my clothes and my cleaning rags… I’m guessing you don’t need your sealskin washed?”

Lance almost looked offended as he quickly pulled his head into his body and let out a most undignified noise a seal could muster. He did not look impressed that Keith would even suggest touching his precious sealskin. Not that Keith would actually take it from him or try to hide it. In all honesty it was Lance’s most precious possession.

“Want to learn how to wash clothes?” Asked Keith. “It’ll be the first time you’ve used soap, right? You’ll probably love soap bubbles.”

Lance’s eyes lit up in excitement. He quickly nodded and made a bunch of happy seal noises. Though Keith couldn’t really tell if he was excited about washing clothes or soap bubbles. If he had to make a guess it was probably the soap bubbles. Unless he was weird and actually wanted to wash clothes. Lance was kind of weird, so it could go either way.

“Yeah, it’ll be an interesting day…” Muttered Keith. “Best to get all the house stuff out of the way before I get sent more stuff… If you help out and don’t get lazy halfway through, I’ll buy you two pasteries.” Lance gave him a confused look and snorted. “Those flakey, buttery things we were eating.”

The seal’s eyes suddenly lit up with joy. He quickly reared up and slammed down onto Keith, hard. “Bawargawar! Arraff! Brabra pfffffffpt bwa! Araf arrrrrrr bah!” He bellowed and babbled. Keith made a mental note not to tell Lance good news when he was this close to Lance while he was in his seal form.


	14. Soap

Washing day sucked, but at least Lance seemed to like soap and was okay with helping Keith wash all his stuff. He would quickly scrub the clothes on the washboard and grin when he saw how soapy it was. 

“This is so cool!” Said Lance. He piled a lot of bubbles onto his hand and blew them off. “It’s like sea foam. But smells nice.”

“Yeah, I managed to extract some oil from some flowers to make the soap smell nicer.” Said Keith.

“I see.” Lance happily picked up the shirt he was scrubbing and happily hung it up on the washing line that Keith had set up earlier. They had spent most of the morning cleaning clothes. Lance didn’t seem to mind at all and was having a fantastic time washing Keith’s shirts and robes. There was no way Keith was going to let the selkie touch his pants or underwear. That just seemed weird to him.

So Keith just went about washing his own undergarments and pants. He felt better knowing that his clothes weren’t stiff with salt anymore. It would be nice to have clothes that were actually kind of soft and not stiff as a board. Once they were done doing the laundry, Keith needed to have a bath. 

He dragged out a larger tub that he used for his bedsheets and started to fill it with water. As he did so, Lance helped him fill it with water. “What are we washing now? That’s a really big tub.”

“Yeah… I’m going to have a bath. You can just swim around in the river while I’m cleaning myself.”

“Huh, okay?” Lance shrugged, pulled his seal skin on, and kind of rolled down the hill and into the water with a loud splash.

When Keith felt that Lance was far enough away, Keith quickly undressed and got into the tub. Once he was in the water his body naturally started to heat up the water until it was steaming. Keith then quickly went about rubbing his soap onto his body and hair. The slight floral smell was nice and it was subtle enough that it didn’t bother him too much.

He needed to make some more soap soon. He was almost out. The bar he was using was his last bar. Maybe he could ask Lance to head down to the butchers to get a few lumps of lard? That was probably the best thing to do. Then again he needed to start making more flower oil. He’d need a lot of flowers.

Once he was washed, dried, and got himself dressed, he walked down to the river. For some reason Lance was rolling around in the mud. Slapping his fins around in it, making mud fly all over the place.

“Are you having fun?” He asked.

Lance looked up and happily slapped his tail in the water. “Arrf! Arrf! Arrf!”

“Want to come with me into town? I need to get lard.”

Lance tilted his head and rolled into the water.

“... I’ll take that as a no.” Keith sighed and shook his head. “Well, I’ll be back in a bit.” Keith grabbed some money and headed to town. It was easy enough for him to buy some lumps of lard, along with some pork for dinner tonight. While he was there he went to see Kolivan.

The man looked like he was working on a breastplate. He nodded at the wicche as he hammered away. “Good afternoon Keith. It’s been a while since I last saw you.”

“Yeah. I got sent to Saltwall for a few days.” Said Keith as he leaned against a table. “So, what are you making?”

“A small shield for a fighter.” He said. “It’s a bit of a rush job since this person is a traveler, but it should be done by the end of today or early tomorrow.”

“Nice.”

“Yes. How was the ocean?”

“Big and wet.”

“Naturally.”

“Yeah.”

“Where is your familiar?”

“Lance is playing around in the river, so I just let him be.”

“And what are you doing in town?” Asked Kolivan. “Not just to visit me is it?”

Keith chuckled. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be the worst? Nah, I came to get some lard. Bought some pork belly for dinner too.”

“Nice. What is the lard for?”

“I’m making soap.” Said Keith. “Want a bar or two if I make too many?”

Koliven had a playful smirk on his face. “What? You think I need to use soap? Isn’t that kind of rude of you, Mr fir wicche?”

“Do you even remember what your natural skin colour is? You’re constantly covered in soot and grime.”

“Cheeky bastard. Yeah, I’ll take a bar if you have any spare.”

“Cool. Any spare knives?”

Kolivan pointed to a barrel. “Take what you like. I think there are some spoons in there.”

Keith nodded, paid for a few knives and a wonky looking spoon before heading back. When he got back, Lance was rolling down the hill and into the river. He seemed to be having fun, so Keith let him be so he went inside and went about making soap.

It was easy enough for him to find an appropriate cauldron and started the rendering process while he went about looking for the other ingredients. He managed to find a small bottle of lavender oil. It was perfect. He wouldn’t need too much for his soap.

***

Once Lance got tired of rolling down the hill, he cleaned himself and happily walked up to the house. When he got inside he saw Keith pouring something that smelled like cooked meat into a cauldron. He had no idea what he was doing. Probably magic stuff.

“What are you up to?” He asked.

“Making soap.” Said Keith.

“Oh? Can I watch?”

“Sure. Just sit there and don’t touch anything. Everything is either hot or dangerous. You can eat the bits of pork.”

Lance nodded and sat down to watch Keith work as he nibbled on pork bits. It was okay. He still preferred chicken. Keith poured lots of powders and oils into the cauldron and soon the whole house started to smell like soothing flowers. It was lovely.

“What is that?” Asked Lance. “It doesn’t just smell floral.”

“Yeah, it’s lavender.” Said Keith. “It’s a soothing kind of smell that makes people feel calm. It’s not really anything I use for my spells, but I use lavender oil for soaps and sometimes incense. It’s nice.”

“It smells really nice.”

“Yeah, but the oil is hard to make. Well, I find it hard.” Said Keith. “It’s a little annoying, but I do it when I feel like it.” He got a spoon and started mixing the stuff in the pot. Lance really liked what he was doing. Keith was so cool. 

Maybe he could make Keith feel better if he got him some flowers? There were lots of small white flowers in the grass around the house. Maybe he could pick a lot of those for Keith? He might like it… How did humans show that they liked each other anyway? The most logical thing he could think of was buying things for each other. But Lance didn’t actually have any money.

“... Hey Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I have some spending money?”

Keith seemed a little surprised. “Why? You know I’ll buy you anything you need.”

“Well yeah, but what if I need it for an emergency?” Asked Lance. “Like… Um… What if I get super hungry and there are no fish or chicken around for me to eat? I’ll starve!”

“Oh no.” Said Keith sarcastically. “You’ll waste away to something.”

“Hey!”

Keith chuckled and tapped his spoon against the side of the cauldron. “Jokes aside, that is probably a good idea. I’ll find you a money pouch and put some coins in it soon.”

“Thanks.”

Eventually Keith went about pouring the soap into a mould and took it outside to set. When he was done, Lance helped Keith put things away. He wondered how he would bring up the subject of humans showing interest to each other. Keith went about making tea this time for the both of them Lance thought drinking warm flavoured water was a little odd, but he did like seafood soup.

Once they were all settled down, Lance decided to just be direct. “So, the weather is warming up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah… It’s around this time of year that my pod will start heading to our um… Breeding island.”

“Oh…” Keith frowned a little. “Do you want to go? Like, if it’s that time of the year for you, if you want to find a mate…”

“Oh no.” Said Lance quickly. “Still loving the bachelor life here. It just got me thinking.”

“What about?”

“Well… I’m guessing you don’t have a mate?”

Keith blushed a little. “Um, no… I don’t have a mate.”

“I see… Why?”

Keith shrugged. “Never that interested I guess? Or no one was interested in me…”

“Do you have courting gifts?” Asked Lance.

“What do selkies do?” Asked Keith.

Lance shrugged. “Well, we fight for territory, like a normal seal would, but we don’t usually fight for something like a harem. We fight for the best spot to be noticed, give shells and cool things to the people we are interested in… Sometimes fish.”

“Huh, similar to humans then.”

“Humans fight for the best beach spot?”

“... Not that. The giving things and sometimes giving food.” Explained Keith.

Lance nodded a little as he thought this over. Keith probably wouldn’t like shells, plus he didn’t want to give up his sea shells. Those were his. He would have to look around the village to see what kinds of things humans seemed to like. Maybe he could talk to Adam to see what he gave to Shiro to court him? That would be nice.

“Speaking of food…” Said the selkie. “There are lots of fish in the river lately… Would you like me to bring you some?”

“Oh? Um, sure. Might be nice to eat fish every once in a while.” Said Keith. “But tonight I’m cooking pork belly. Want to try some?”

“I love trying human food.” Said Lance in excitement. “Human food is so tasty!”

Keith chuckled. “Okay, but just so you know, pork has to be cooked thoroughly.”

“... Why?”

“Because pork has so many diseases and parasites in it.” Said Keith. “It needs to be cooked or you could get very sick. I hope you like crispy pork belly.”

“Hmmm, I’ll still try it!” Said Lance excitedly. Food that Keith cooked was always interesting. He didn’t always like it as much as Keith did, but he loved trying human food, and he was always thankful that Keith would think of him and give him food too. Besides, crispy pork belly sounded interesting. Maybe it would be like tuna belly? Tuna belly was so yummy and tasty.


	15. Waterfall

Keith was busy doing his wicche duties, so Lance was free to swim around in the river like he did every day. He had been given a lot of work, so Lance was going to swim down the river as far as he felt like it. He liked rivers. They were very straightforward compared to the ocean. Not much deviation.

When Lance got caught up in some faster moving water he didn’t bat an eye. It reminded him of the waves he used to ride during typhoons. He and his siblings loved surfing those waves, even if his mama bellowed at them to knock it off. However, Lance didn’t know that waterfalls were a thing. 

So he shot out through the air, and landed with the most spectacular splash into the water below. The waterfall wasn’t very tall, but damn it still hurt like a bitch. Lance crawled up onto land and groaned loudly. He felt like he got punted into the air by a blue whale again. Those guys could be dicks when they wanted.

Sitting just a few feet away from him was a large looking man that kind of looked like he had some thick scales on his face and arms. They looked just as confused as Lance. They looked like they might have been fishing.

“Um… Well… You seem a little lost there buddy.” They said.

Lance sat up and pulled off his seal skin, shocking the man there even more. “Yeah, I guess I am. Anyway, hi. I’m Lance. I’m a selkie. What about you? You don’t look exactly human.”

“Oh, I’m Hunk. I’m a troll.” Said Hunk. “Aren’t selkies meant to be living in the sea?”

“Yeah, but I’m a familiar to a wicche.” Said Lance. “I’ve never seen a troll before…”

“To be fair I haven’t seen a selkie before either.”

“Hmm, fair.” Lance stood up and tied his seal skin around his hips. “So what are you doing here?”

“Just a bit of fishing.” He showed Lance his bucket. “Got some nice bass today.”

“Bass is so good…”

“Yeah. Want one?”

“... Yes please.”

Hunk handed Lance a fish, and Lance happily sat next to him to eat it. Fish was really, really good. Lance still liked it more than chicken. The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes as Hunk fished and Lance ate. 

When Lance was pretty much done eating he looked back over at Hunk. “So… You live near here?”

“Yeah, there’s a small clan of us a little closer to the mountain.” Said Hunk. “I just came out here to fish. We don’t really get along with humans too much, so we try not to go to their villages unless we really have to. Humans tend to be a little… violent to trolls.”

“Humans aren’t that much nicer to selkie’s either… But Keith is really, really nice. He’s my master. He’s a fire wicche.” Said Lance. “He’s a little shorter than me and has like, really thick black hair. It’s kind of long. I want to brush it, but I doubt he will let me. He does all these really cool things with his fire magic. It’s so cool! He uses manna to give weapons special powers and stuff and I like it. He gave me this piece of metal that he practiced on that has like, fire manna in it. It’s so cool. It can’t cut or anything though… Still cool.”

Hunk chuckled and drew in his line. “Sounds like you really like that wicche.”

“Yeah, he’s awesome...” Lance sighed a little as he stared across the river. “My mama and papa are still kind of iffy about him, but I still love being his familiar. I think they are just worried that Keith will burn my seal skin and I’d be stuck on land forever… But I want to be here and Keith has given me lots of outs if I don’t want to be with him.”

Hunk hummed a little. “Yeah, reminds me a little of when I first started dating Shay… I was so shocked she wanted to be with me that I gave her every opportunity to leave.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“Well Shay and I are still together. So pretty well I think.”

Lance grinned. “That’s good. Oh! By the way, I live up river if you ever want to visit.”

“Oh… Um… You don’t live too close to the village do you?”

“No, our house is on a small hill by the river. It’s away from the village. Keith might be a little surprised to see you, but I don’t think he would be upset.” Said Lance. “... I might have to talk to him about it though… Anyway, Keith hasn’t said anything bad about trolls or any other magical creatures… Unless he’s mad that he ran out of an ingredient… That’s a whole different story.”

Hunk laughed a little at that and grinned. “Yeah. Sounds about right.” He stood up and dusted himself off. “Well, I should start heading back home now. Do you need help getting back up the waterfall?”

“Yeah, that would be nice.”

“Okay. Can you be a little more… aerodynamic?”

“Like this?” Lance pulled his skin back on and looked up at him.

“Yeah, that will do.” Hunk picked Lance up and launched Lance through the air like a javelin back up the river.

Lance landed in the water with a plop and swam back up the river. Lance was excited to head home and tell Keith about the new friend he had just made. When he got back home, Lance wasn’t surprised to see that Keith was still inside working. Lance went inside and sat in his little nesting space.

He wondered how land creatures got mates. Sure Keith had said that humans give each other gifts and food, but Lance didn’t know where to start. Keith looked like he liked practical things. Maybe farming things? That would be… interesting? He’s seen farmers with things that looked like giant forks. Maybe Keith would like one of those? They looked so cool. Maybe something more pointy? Another knife? A cool knife? He could ask Kolivan for a cool knife.

Keith suddenly sighed loudly and leaned back in his chair. He looked like he was done for the day. “Fuck… My hands hurt…”

“Hand massage?” Suggested Lance.

“I feel like your idea of a massage is just slapping it.”

“And?”

Keith chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Whatever… Anyway, how was your day?”

“My day was fun!” Said Lance. He happily slapped his hands on the ground. “I went swimming! I ate some tasty fish! I swam off a waterfall and I met a troll! His name is Hunk and he gave me a fish! Then he threw me back up the waterfall!”

Keith looked shocked. “You met a troll?”

“Yeah. Why? Are they bad?”

He shook his head. “Well, no… But they are a little… Well trolls don’t really get along with humans that much…”

“But Hunk is nice.”

“Hey, I’m not saying he isn’t nice. If he’s nice to you then I don’t mind if you have him as a friend.” Said Keith. He got up and started to grab some things to make a quick snack for himself. By the look of it, it seemed like he was eating a slice of crusty bread with a generous helping of lard. Left over from Keith’s soap making days earlier.

“Okay. Cool. So I still don’t know why you eat that. You said it was for soap?”

“Yeah, well… lard is good.” Said Keith. “Plus it’s an easier spread than butter. Butter is nice, but it melts way too quickly and spoils too fast. Lard keeps longer.”

“Hmmm, it’s funky.”

“Your breath is funky.”

Lance gasped in fake shock. “Rude?!”

Keith rolled his eyes and cut another slice of bread off from the loaf and smeared more lard on it. “Want to try some?”

“Hmm no.”

Keith shrugged and ate it. “Suit yourself. More for me.”

“Hmm… Yeah…”

“Yeah… I got a letter from Shiro today.”

“Yeah?”

“He wants to have us over for dinner tomorrow.”

Lance whined and flopped onto his side. “I don’t wanna go! I hate stairs! Why does his place have so many stairs?”

“... You are lazy.”

“And?”

Keith rolled his eyes, but smiled fondly at him. “You’re dumb. So tell me more about this troll that you met? Hunk, right?”

“Yeah! Hunk is really, really cool! He was fishing with a pole.” Said Lance. “Totally ineffective. Swimming and chomping on them is much better… Though nets get more fish… My papa is the best at catching fish.”

“I’m sure he is.” Keith went about getting pots and pans together to make stew or something for his dinner. Keith seemed to like to just like shoving everything in a pot and sticking it in his fireplace. Seemed a little lazy, but as long as Keith liked it, then that was enough for Lance. As he talked, Lance watched Keith cook. Maybe one day Lance could make soup for Keith? A variation of the tasty fish soup his papa made.


	16. Phoenix

The next evening Lance and Keith went to visit Shiro for dinner. With a lot of complaining from Lance about stairs, they were welcomed into Shiro’s home. Though Keith couldn’t see Adam. He didn’t know where Adam was until he saw a very tiny, ugly, baby bird looked out of the metal nesting bowl.

“... So Adam died?” Asked Keith.

Shiro nodded. “Yeah, this morning he kind of curled up and burst into flames… He’s a little upset about it, but… Well, there wasn’t much we could do about it. So until he can grow feathers he’s stuck like that.”

Keith walked over to where Adam was. The baby phoenix was glaring up at him with their little beady black eyes set in their gross, pink, frog face. He looked like a chewed up wad of angry pink goo that kind of looked a little like a deformed man.

“Fuck, you are ugly.”

Adam glared at him and screeched as loud as they could. He had little dark purple spots and orange spots in his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re still ugly.”

“Don’t be mean to Adam.” Said Shiro as he walked over to where Adam was while carrying a mortar and pestle. “He’s a newborn. He’s going to look a little odd for a little while until he gets back to his normal self. Can you get me some of the mealworms and unicorn milk from the shelf?” Keith got those things and handed them over to Shiro. The man put those things in the mortar and ground it up into a paste. When he was done he put some on a spoon and fed it to Adam. “There you go. Eat up.”

Adam happily scarfed down the mush and chirped happily at him. Which made Shiro happy and he fed him another spoon before the phoenix was full and sat down in his ashes. Lance gave Adam some weird looks.

He crouched down next to him and glared at him. “So, this is really Adam?” He asked.

“Yep.” Said Shiro. “Baby birds usually look like this. Adam will be back to his normal self in a few weeks. Maybe a few months.”

“So he’ll be stuck like this until then?” Asked Lance.

“No. When he is able to cover himself in feathers he’ll be able to change back into a human form.” Informed Shio. “He’ll probably look about ten or thirteen when he changes into a human… I need to find some child sized robes for him…”

“Yeah, you should.” Said Keith. “So, want me to help you cook?”

“Yes please.”

“Okay, Lance? Look after Adam and don’t kill him or anything.” Said Keith.

Lance gave him a little salute and watched Adam. In turn, Adam glared his beady little eyes at Lance and chirped. The selkie looked very surprised, but grinned at him anyway. He seemed to enjoy how weird Adam looked.

The two wicche’s headed to the kitchen and tried to figure out what to cook for dinner. Adam was usually the one that cooked because he didn’t destroy things when he cooked. Keith had no idea how Shiro was going to survive until Adam could cook again. He was going to have to survive off of bread and jarred lard from the markets. He should have brought over some lard for Shiro.

“So, how are things with Lance going?”

“Pretty good.” Said Keith as he looked at some meat on a hook. “He met a toll the other day.”

Shiro seemed surprised. “Oh? Really?”

“Yeah. Some troll called Hunk. Seems friendly enough.”

“Oh Hunk! I know him.” Said Shiro. “He’s a pretty friendly guy. Helped me gather a few ingredients a few times when I was out.”

“That’s pretty cool.” Said Keith. He felt a little less worried about Lance hanging around Hunk since Shiro could vouch for him. “I haven’t met him yet.”

“He’s a nice guy. Good heart, very strong, very kind, a little dense about certain things, but I think I might have confused him with my wicche jargon.”

“Maybe… You want me to cook anything? Being a fire wicche and all…”

“Yeah, just cook that.” Shiro pointed to some lump of meat on a hook.

Keith stood next to it and left his manna flow into his hands. He let it pool there and build up before he slowly let the heat seep out. Slowly the meat started to cook. After a few minutes the smell of cooking meat filled his nose. Shiro put a plate under it to catch any drippings that might have fallen off during the cooking.

The smell of food made Lance look over at them. “Food?” He questioned.

“Do you want some goat meat?” Asked Shiro. “I also have a few fish if you want those.”

“Fish!” Lance happily slapped the table a few times, making Adam’s nest/bowl wobble a little. Adam screeched a few times in indignation. “Sorry Adam!”

Shiro chuckled a little and started to cut up some vegetables. “He’s going to keep screeching no matter what. All he can do is screech right now… But let me know if he starts to shiver. He needs to stay warm.”

“Will do.” Lance went back to watching Adam, and Adam looked like an angry, wrinkled old man staring back at the selkie. “... You look like a baby seagull.”

“... SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!”

Somehow Shiro didn’t manage to set the vegetables on fire and they managed to have a nice dinner together. Shiro even put Adam at the dinner table and set his bowl on top of a heating stone to keep him warm. That seemed to placate him for the moment and decided to kick up the ash in his bowl.

“So how are things?” Asked Shiro.

“Yeah, pretty good.” Said Lance as he looked down at his fish, before he shoved one in his mouth. He chewed it for a bit before pulling a face. “It’s been gutted!”

“It was like that when I bought them.” Said Shiro.

Lance pouted a little and reluctantly continued to eat. He clearly wanted a full fish with all the bits still inside. Which kind of weirded Keith out a little, but Lance was used to eating fish whole.

Keith just rolled his eyes and lightly tapped Lance’s leg under the table. “Don’t be rude. Shiro didn’t have to get you fish.”

“Screeeeeeeeee!!!”

“Do you want more food Adam?” Asked Shiro.

“Eeeeeeee!”

Shiro fed him a little more of the paste. “There you go.” That seemed to satisfy the tiny phoenix for the moment. 

“How long is he going to be like that?” Asked Lance curiously.

“He should be eating bugs and not paste in about a week.” Said Shiro. He gently stuck his finger out and Adam rubbed his chin on his finger. He made a few pleased sounds about being touched by Shiro. It looked like it made Shiro’s heart melt. He was adorable. “Yeah, you’ll be okay.”

“So you just have to raise him?” Asked Lance.

“Yep.” Said Shiro. “I don’t mind. I think it helps build a stronger bond between us. It’s like taking care of him when he’s sick.”

“SCREEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

“I know you’re not sick. I just mean you’re small, useless, and need help.”

Adam’s jaw dropped in shock. “SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” He waved around his tiny little chicken wing-like arms around in anger. He might not have been able to speak but the meaning was clear. He was not useless. Though he kind of was. Smoke was starting to seep out of the baby phoenix’s mouth.

Shiro just ignored him and ate some more of his food. “Just ignore him. All he can do is make smoke. He can’t make fire until he hits roughly 7-8 days old.” Adam tilted his head back and screeched as a small ploom of smoke billowed out of his tiny beak.

Keith rolled his eyes and waved his hand around to try and get rid of some of the smoke. “So, how’s work going?” He asked Shiro.

“Same old, same old.” Said Shiro. “A new set of students have come in and are ready for their studies… I know you don’t really like kids, but maybe you could do a little demonstration?”

“What kind of demonstration?”

“Nothing crazy.” Said Shiro. “I just know that you’re one of the best people when it comes to all manna manipulation. Most other people that are good at it are very, very far away, and I just want to show them that their manna doesn’t define what their job can be. Also, your familiar is a selkie. The complete opposite manna type to yours. It will really help calm some of the younger wicche’s.”

“Um… Sure…” Keith was a little iffy about it, but since it was Shiro asking for the favour, he would do it. “What do you think Lance? Want to do some teaching with the young wicches?”

Lance just looked confused. “So you’re not born wicche’s and know everything?”

“Not really.” Said Keith. “But do you want to come and help out?”

“Yeah. I’d like to help. Sounds fun.”

“Okay, but you’ll need to stay looking like a seal.” Said Keith. “You don’t like wearing clothes, so I don’t want to risk you accidentally flashing your butt ot dick in front of a bunch of thirteen year olds.”

“Eh, fine…” Muttered Lance. He looked rather annoyed about being confined to his seal form, but then he seemed to realise that he would probably end up getting lots of pats and he could slap the ground a lot and get away with it. “Sounds fun.”

Keith glared at him. “Don’t you get any funny ideas.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.” Said Lance in a sugary sweet tone.

It made Keith glare at him some more. “Don’t you dare do something stupid.”

“I would never.”

“Hmmm…”

“... I might a little.”

Shiro chuckled. “Glad to see you two are getting along really well. The bond between you is pretty strong, considering you two have opposite manna types.” The dinner continued with Adam occasionally screeching for attention and food, and the two wicche’s talking about the ins and outs of teaching small wicches. Lance just wanted more fish.


	17. Teaching

Keith immediately regretted agreeing to teach young wicches about manna. He hated kids. They were loud, obnoxious, and if he was honest? Kind of smelled awful. Especially the boys. Did they not know what a bar of soap was? Keith wanted to rip his eyes out and set himself on fire. Though he couldn’t set himself on fire. This was so fucking annoying.

Lance seemed to be having a blast though. He was rolling around the stone floor, happily slapping the floor to make noise, or he’d roll onto his back and happily slap his belly, which made some of the kids giggle.

Shiro was there, holding Adam in his hand. Adam was still an ugly looking baby bird that screeched his head off every few seconds. It was possible that Adam hated kids too… or he was trying to speak their language, since he was technically a child at the moment too.

“Alright everyone, settle down.” Said Shiro. “Now, you have a special guest here today. This is Keith. You are to address him as Master Keith.”

“Good morning Master Keith.” Droned the children in a monotone unison.

Shiro smiled and carefully put Adam down on his desk, which he did not like. “Now as you all know I am sure you are all aware that I am light wicche and therefore my manna is associated with light. My familiar, Adam, is a phoenix and therefore his manna is associated with fire. Many wicches, once they find out what their manna is they don’t often get their familiar that deviates too far from it. Which is why I invited Keith here today.” He gestured for Keith to talk.

Keith cleared his throat a little. “Okay, so I am Keith. I am a fire wicche.” With a flick of his wrist he made flames dance across the palm of his hand. That really grabbed their attention. “So my manna is more closely connected to light and earth. When I summoned my familiar I expected to summon something like a phoenix or a wolf. I didn’t expect to summon Lance. Lance is a selkie and therefore his manna is connected to water. The opposite of mine.”

“Bwa!” Lance happily slapped the floor. Which made the kids giggle. Which made Lance slap the floor even more.

A kid put their hand up. “Master Keith?”

“Yes?”

“If he is a selkie then why does he look like a seal? I thought selkies were people that wear seal skins?”

Keith looked down at Lance and shrugged. “Selkies don’t wear clothes. They just wear their seal skins over their bodies. Lance usually ties his around his hips. Kind of like a skirt. So he’s going to stay looking like a seal”

“Is he fat?” Asked a kid. That got some of the others to giggle. Lance’s jaw dropped at how rude the kid was. He looked like he wanted to flatten the kid.

Keith just rolled his eyes. “Kid, the ocean is cold. Lance and all seals in general need that layer of fat to stay warm. He’s actually an extremely fit and healthy seal. It translates well into when he is in human form.”

“Brap?” Lance looked up at Keith and tilted his head. It was like he was asking Keith if he thought he had a nice body. Keith just ignored the sound of Lance’s questioning noise and went back to attempting to teach.

“Anyway, having one type of manna doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.” Said Keith. “Sure there is some difficulty, but we get along really well.”

A kid put their hand up. “Master Keith? What kind of difficulties are there?”

Keith looked down at Lance. The selkie looked up at him and rolled onto his side. “Well, since Lance is a higher intelligence magical creature, Lance didn’t need to have the communication spell placed on him since he already understands me and can speak in a language I understand when he’s in his human form. It was a little daunting to have him as my familiar. It was also kind of hard because my home wasn’t set up for a water based creature.”

“So manna doesn’t matter?” Asked a kid.

“It does, and it doesn’t.” Said Keef. “Like, if you want to fly you might want to be an air wicche, but there is no reason other wicche’s can’t learn how to do it. It’s just much more difficult. Being a fire wicche I am more attune to light and earth manna than plant or water… But as you can see, fire and water manna can mix together.”

Lance nodded happily and made a few happy seal sounds. It made Keith chuckle and many of the children giggled. Lance smiled as best he could in his seal form. Kind of looked a little like he was snarling. That made the kids laugh and some of them tried to imitate him. That made Lance let out a laugh, which made the kids laugh louder.

If Keith was honest, it kind of annoyed him. Lance was loud enough without hearing kids laughing too. He was pretty sure he was getting a migraine.

“Master Keith.” Said one of the students. “What if you and your familiar don’t get along?”

Keith frowned a little. He hadn’t talked to Lance about what it meant for the wicche when the wicche and familiar separated. “Well, the spell to get a familiar is kind of soup binding. If the familiar is something like a cat or a dog without any extreme magical leanings then they will stay with you forever… Since Lance is a higher magical creature he is able to decide if he does or does not want to be with me.”

“What happens if he leaves?” Asked another kid.

Keith frowns deepened. “Look… I don’t know what it’s like on the familiar’s end but… For a wicche, if we are rejected by our familiar we are… We can’t get another familiar. The bond is a kind of forever thing. The only way the bond between a wicche and familiar is broken is if one dies. Granted, if a wicche kills their familiar then their manna becomes tainted and you’ll get less familiar’s wanting to be your familiar… Without your familiar you feel empty, hollow, and just not yourself anymore… You don’t get up in the morning because you want to, it’s because you have to… A-anyway, let’s talk about something a little nicer...”

Keith continued on with his talk until the chime of a bell rang out. It scared the heck out of Lance. He kind of ended up looking like a big, round ball of shock. He was a very shook selkie. That made the kids laugh again as they grabbed their things and left the class.

When they were gone, Shiro looked over at them. “I think that went well. Looks like you have a knack for teaching.”

“Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

“Adam agrees.”

Keith rolled his eyes and looked down at Lance. “So, what did you think of that?”

Lance pulled his seal skin off and shrugged. “I thought it was okay. It was like being on a beach when everyone’s had their pups. Lots of screaming. Very loud… Do you really think I look fit in my human form?”

“... No comment…” Muttered Keith. “Put your skin back on. We’re heading home. We have work to do.”

“No we don’t?”

“Yes we do.” Said Keith. “Let’s go blubber butt.”

Lance gasped in fake shock and quickly on his seal skin. He was going to have to seal hop out of the building until they were far enough away for Lance to take off his seal skin and walk around without potentially scaring the little wicches. Though Lance didn’t really seem to care. He never did.

They walked home for a few minutes while talking a bit about the wicche school thing. Eventually the conversation fizzled out and Lance started a new one. “Hey Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“You said that we were… That wicche’s feel really bad when their familiar leaves…” He said quietly. “Why did you try to get me to leave you before if it was going to hurt you?”

“Because your life is more important.” Said Keith.

Lance suddenly stopped walking, which made Keith stop walking. “What do you mean you’re not important?”

Keith shrugged and was honestly kind of confused. “I’m not important. I mean, no one really cares about me. I don’t have a family. The only one that I consider my family is Shiro, and if I was to suddenly vanish it’s not like anything would really change in the grand scheme of things. Shiro would have Adam. I’m not that even important when it comes to what I use my manna for. If I was gone someone else would take over.”

The selkie frowned and put both hands on Keith’s shoulders, staring intensely at him. “Keith. Everything down to the smallest grain of sand is important. Everything has a reason and a purpose. Shiro isn’t your only family. I am your family too… I care about you. I love you.”

Keith’s face went bright red. “Y-you what?!”

“That’s the right word, right?” Asked Lance. “My mama tells my papa that she loves him all the time, and my papa says he loves her. They tell us that they love us, and my siblings say that they love each other… so, I love you Keith.”

Keith continued to blush. “Right… I um… I guess I love you too…”

“Aw, you only guess?” Lance was pouting now.

“Yeah. Guess.”

Lance whined and leaned heavily against Keith, almost making him over balance. “Hey! Quit that.”

“Make me.”

“... Okay.” Keith stepped back and Lance fell over. 

The selkie looked shocked. “My Master is mean…”

“You’re exaggerating.” Said Keith. “Come on. We’re almost home.”

***

When they got home Keith flopped onto a chair and sighed. He seemed pretty tired. Lance would have just gone down to the river to chill, but Keith seemed kind of drained. He needed to relax a little. So Lance obviously had to help him. It was a familiar’s duty after all, and Keith was like his family.

“Hey Keith?”

“Yeah? What is it Lance?”

Lance lied on his back and patted his hands against his stomach. “Lay down with me?”

“Why?”

“Selkie thing. Trust me.”

Keith didn’t seem like he had the energy to argue and just laid down next to Lance. They both stared up at the ceiling for a minute just listening to the sounds of birds and basic nature noises outside the house. After a few more peaceful moments Lance pulled his seal skin on and started to slap his stomach.

He paused after a few minutes and looked over at Keith that was looking at him. Lance grinned and started slapping his stomach again. Before stopping and looking back over at Keith. The wicche frowned a little and lightly tapped his hands on his own stomach.

Lance made a very happy sound and continued to slap his stomach. He quickly picked up on the light thumping sound next to him. He looked over and saw Keith drumming on his own stomach. It made Lance grin and started slapping his stomach some more just out of happiness.

After a good five minutes of soft slapping sounds Keith suddenly reached out and touched Lance’s flipper. It made Lance pause and look at him. Keith had a small smile on his face. “Um, thanks. I think I needed that.”

Lance shuffled over to him a little and gently nuzzled his face. He was happy that Keith was happy. His nuzzling seemed to tickle Keith a little because he laughed, and it sounded so pretty. It made Lance’s heart skip a beat a little. Keith looked so much better when he was relaxed. He rested his head against Keith’s shoulder and tickled his neck with whiskers.

Keith laughed some more and pushed Lance’s face away. “You still have fish breath.” Lance rolled his eyes and rested his chin on Keith’s stomach. His wicche smiles and sighed. “Thanks for cheering me up… Today has been kind of stressful. We’ll just relax for the next few days. Okay?”

“Braaaargh.”

“I will take that as a yes.”


	18. Honey

Little by little Keith noticed a slight change in Lance’s behaviour. Lance was sticking closer to him and when he went out to the river or out to town to get things for him, Lance would come back with a little gift for him. He’d say things like; I thought you would like it. Which was nice, but a little odd in Keith’s opinion.

He didn’t really understand what Lance was doing, but was happy that Lance was giving him things. He hadn’t really been given stuff for nothing. He just assumed that this might be familiar behaviour. Like how a dog might give their master a cool stick, or a cat might give their master a dead bird.

At the moment, the two of them were walking down the side of the river. To be more accurate, Keith was walking and Lance was swimming. Keith was collecting some herbs he was almost out of for personal use. Mostly healing balms for cuts and abrasions from his work.

Lance was very happy swimming by him. He’d usually ducked down and stirred up the mud around the riverbed. Sometimes he would come up chewing something, or he’d have a rock in his mouth.

“Having fun there?” Asked Keith when Lance came up with something that he crunched quite loudly in his mouth.

Lance looked at him and grinned at him. “Bwah!”

“That’s good.” Keith crouched down and gathered up some flowers.

“BWAH!”

Keith quickly looked up to see Lance quickly climbing out of the river and seal hopping over to a troll. Keith gulped and very cautiously got the troll’s attention. “Hey there…”

The troll looked very surprised to see both Lance and Keith. “H-hey there.” They said. “Um… Are you Lance’s wicche?”

“Yeah. Are you Hunk?”

They nodded. “Yeah. I’m Hunk… Keith, right?”

“Yeah.”

Hunk seemed to relax a little. “Good to finally meet you. What are you two doing all the way out here in the woods?”

Lance happily clapped his flippers together. “Arf!”

“I don’t speak seal buddy.” Said Hunk calmly.

Lance huffed and pulled off his seal skin, while he was doing this Keith answered. “Getting some supplies. You?”

“I’m doing a bit of gathering myself.” Said Hunk. He showed Keith a large basket he had filled with nuts, berries, and flowers. “I’m looking around for a hive to get some honey. It’s peak season for honey. Hives should be overflowing by now and if I take a few then the hives should be fine during the winter.”

Keith nodded but noticed that Hunk didn’t seem to have anything to ward off bees. “You aren’t worried about getting stung?

Hunk shook his head. “Troll skin is too thick for most insects to sting or bite us.”

“What’s honey?” Asked Lance as he finally tied his seal skin around his hips.

“It’s this really sweet stuff that bees make.” Said Hunk. “It’s really, really nice. However bees don’t really like people taking it and well… They can sting you. It hurts a lot if you don’t have skin like a troll.”

“I should show you some beekeepers some time.” Said Keith. He wondered what Lance would do if he saw a bunch of hives all lined up with the beekeepers just plodding around collecting honey. He’d probably find it odd… Then maybe knock over a hive and get attacked by a bunch of angry bees, and an angry beekeeper.

“Can we come with you?” Asked Lance. “I want to try some of this honey stuff.”

Keith shrugged. “I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”

Hunk smiled at them. “Sure. There’s a flower field a little over there. Should be a hive or two around. I just came over here to get a drink before I went back to looking for honey.”

The trio eventually made their way to the flower field. In Keith’s opinion it looked more like a meadow. Local fairies had planted them apparently. Keith wasn’t so sure if they did or didn’t, but Keith always thought it was nice and only took a few flowers if he needed them and he hadn’t been cursed yet. So he assumed that he hadn’t pissed anyone off yet.

Lance made an excited noise and took off running through the flowers. He even started making seal noises while still staying in his human form. It made both Keith and Hunk chuckle.

“So, I guess Lance is always like this?” Asked Hunk.

“Yeah. He gets really excited when he sees new things.” Said Keith. “I don’t think he’s seen this many flowers in one spot before.” They watched Lance trip and vanish in a sea of pink, blue, and purple.

After a few minutes of watching Lance do his thing, Hunk walked around the edge of the meadow, keeping an eye out for bees. Keith walked with him and the two of them quickly found a few bees hanging around a crack in a tree trunk. The crack was practically oozing with honey that was running down the tree trunk and attracting some ants.

“I think we found a beehive.” Said Hunk.

Keith nodded in agreement. “Yeah… So how are we going to get the honey? The hive is kind of… Inside?”

Hunk nodded and sighed. “Yeah… I think I’ll have to kind of pull it open…”

“With the bees still in?” Asked Keith. “Yeah, no. Let me think for a second…” He didn’t want the bees to get hurt or their home to get too messed up. He tried to remember some spells he knew that would be helpful. “... Okay, I think I can do something… Might piss the bees off a little… but shouldn’t destroy their home too badly…”

Keith took a small bottle off his hip and pulled a strip of bark off a nearby tree. He poured the powder into the bark and poured some water from his waterskin and mixed it all together to make a reddish paste. A bit more water and Keith had paint. He then went back over to the tree with the beehive in it and fingerpainted a few different symbols on it.

“What are you doing?” Asked Hunk.

“Well, these are blessings to try and improve the potency of the spell I am trying to do.” Explained Keith. “This is earth magic, but the manna is closer to plants than fire, so I need a little help to make sure I don’t accidentally start a forest fire. I’m trying to do some chlorokinesis.”

“What?”

“It basically means plant manipulation.” Keith stood up and dusted his hands off. “Anyway, so can you hold something that’s on fire?”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Perfect.” Keith quickly gathered a bunch of twigs, dead grass, and strips of bark. He tied it together with some twine and handed it, along with a large, flat piece of bark to Hunk. “Here. You need to smoke them out to get them to leave.”

Hunk nodded and held the bundle out. Keith lit it on fire and stood back while Hunk carefully fanned the smoke into the opening of the hive. The bees quickly left the hive, and when Keith thought most of them were gone, Keith put his hands on the tree trunk. He visualised the layers of bark peeling back layer by later. 

He heard Hunk gasp in shock and Keith looked up to see the crack in the tree trunk peel back like the pages of a book, revealing all the tasty honey inside. Keith took the smokey brush off of Hunk and let the troll collect some of the honeycomb. Once he gathered some honeycomb, Keith used his magic to close up the tree and it looked like it had never peeled back in the first place.

“You got all the honey you want?” Asked Keith.

Hunk nodded and started to walk away from the hive, just in case the bees came back, probably. “Yeah, thank you.”

They walked back to the meadow and quickly found Lance talking to some fairies. “Shit! Hey!” He quickly made his way over to them and quickly shooed them away. “Off you go. No making deals with fairies. No making deals with selkies. Shoo.”

One of the fairies blew a raspberry at him and quickly flew away. Another quickly yanked at his hair and giggled. Keith was not amused. Fairies were fickle little things. If they were friendly they would be friendly, but if they were pissed, they would fuck you up.

“What happened?” Asked Keith. “Did they do something?”

Lance shook his head. “No. They are pretty cute. I haven’t seen fairies before. They said I smell like salt.”

“Salt? Just salt?”

“Yeah?”

Keith shook his head. “Anyway, want to try some honey?”

“Yes!” 

The two of them went over to Hunk. The Troll was sitting down and putting honeycomb into jars. He smiled at them and held some up to them. “Here. It’s pretty nice.”

Lance quickly grabbed it. “Oh! It’s sticky!”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Yeah. It’s honey. Just chew and spit out the wax… Actually, keep the wax. I’ll make a candle out of it later.”

Lance grinned and stuffed the whole honeycomb into his mouth. Both Hunka and Keith watched in fascination as Lance’s eyes lit up as he slowly chewed it. He looked super excited and actually sat down and slowly munched on it. The young selkie looked quite adorable with his skin covered in pollen and petals. It made Keith’s heart jump a little in his chest, but he quickly pushed those feelings aside.

“So, do you like honey?”

Lance nodded his head. He spat out a lump of wax and grinned. “Yeah! Can we keep bees at home? Please?”

“No.”

“What?! Why not?!”

“I’m already thinking of making a chicken coop so you can have chicken every other night without me having to buy it.” Said Keith calmly. “Plus, what if the bees decide to live in my roof?”

“Then the house belongs to the bees.”

Keith facepalmed. “Lance, I am not going to let a bunch of bees live in my house.”

“Not with that attitude.”

Keith rolled his eyes and looked over at Hunk. “Do you still need to forage?”

“Nope. Got everything I need.” Said Hunk. He grinned. “Shay is gonna love this date…”

“What’s a date?” Asked Lance as he rolled the beeswax around in his hands. 

Hunk grinned. “A date is where you go and do something special with the person you love.”

Keith could practically see the gears turning in Lance’s head as he thought about this. Lance had declared his love for him in an innocent way. Lance clearly decided that he was part of his family judging from the time he proclaimed his love for him.

“Hunk means someone you love, like how your parents love each other.”

“We can still go on a date!” Said Lance.

“No, we can’t.”

Lance pouted like a child. “Why not? Why can’t we do date things?”

Keith could feel his face heating up. “W-well we can’t. We… We aren’t dating… You’re my familiar and I’m your wicche. That’s it.”

Lance continued to pout.

Hunk awkwardly cleared his throat. “Friend date?”

“Can we do a friend date?” Asked Lance with pleading eyes. “Please? Please? Please?”

Keith sighed and quickly caved in. There was no way he could say no to Lance’s big puppy dog eyes. “Fine… I’ll think of something.” That seemed to be the right thing to say because Lance started clapping and talked at high speed to Hunk while rubbing his honey covered hands on his chest and stomach. He got a lot of grass and dirt stuck to his body.


	19. Grove

Lance was pretty excited to be hedging out of the house at night. Keith didn’t normally need to leave the house at night. He did a few times to catch night insects for certain things. So he was just happy to walk after him with a smile on his face.

“Hey, hey Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere.”

“Aww…”

Keith rolled his eyes and waved his hand. Small flames licked at his fingers like small candles that brightened the night just a little bit. “Does this make it better?”

“Um, a little.” Lance was slightly entranced by the flames on the wicche’s fingers. It made him grin. Fire was such an amazing thing. He had always been intrigued by fire anyway. This was probably because he had lived in the ocean his whole life. The closest he had really gotten to fire was when his father was cooking.

Keith just nodded and continued to walk. He took Lance to a place filled with trees and bioluminescent things. Lots of glowing blue, greens and purples. Trees arched and branches twisted together like beautiful and patterned arches. Small pieces of shiny and glittery things floated by on the wind like dust. It was really pretty and Lance liked it.

“This place is pretty.”

“Yeah, it’s a fae grove.” Explained Keith. “It’s kind of a sacred place to the fae court and they are quite fierce about protecting it. You’re only allowed to use passive magic here or members of the far court will hurt you.”

“Like, those fairy things?” Asked Lance. “They were really cute.”

“Fairies aren’t the only thing part of the fae court.” Said Keith calmly. “The fae court consists of a lot of forest creatures. Fairies, pixies, goblins, trolls, and all manner of creatures. We might see one or two in here, but you know, probably not a good idea to interact with them… I should probably put this out.” He waved his fingers and put the fire out.

Once his fire was out, Lance could really appreciate the grove a lot more. It looked so pretty. Stars blanketed the sky. It looked so beautiful. Lance had always loved the stars. They were both a way to guide him home and something he found beautiful. Thousands of shiny shells in the sky. So beautiful.

“Wow… This place is amazing. It’s so beautiful...”

“Yeah, it is. Come on.” Keith led him a little deeper into the grove until they came across a pond. The pond was so clear it looked like glass or aquamarine. Lance had to resist the urge to jump into the water. Keith sat a little away from the edge of it and Lance happily sat by him. “So, this is the grove…” He said.

Lance nodded and looked around. “It’s really pretty. I like it. So why are we here?”

“You wanted to go on a date, right? Well, here it is...” Muttered Keith.

“Oh! Okay.” Lance smiled at him and continued to look around. The place looked so pretty. It reminded him a lot of the coral forests he used to swim through when he was younger. The mermaids there were always amused to see selkies traveling through their territory. 

“So… What do you think?” Asked Keith.

“Beautiful!” Said Lance excitedly. “I’m half expecting a mermaid to swim through the trees.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Lance smiled and happily looked over at a bush filled with shimmering flowers. They looked like they were made of crystals. He grinned and lied down on his back. He looked up at the stars and hummed. “So, do you have stories about the stars?”

“Hmm?”

“Well, my papa told us stories about the stars and how they are good for navigation and stuff.” Said Lance. “I want to know if selkie stories are different from human ones.” He pointed up at a constellation in the sky. “That one. The big clam!”

Keith lied back and squinted his eyes. “I don’t see it.”

“Right there.” Lance pointed up at the sky. “That kind of really yellow looking one? That’s the start of it. Yeah?”

“Oh, I kind of see it. I think?”

Lance grinned. “Yeah. So this gain clam is said to have birthed the sea and everything in it. It belonged to Allura the goddess of the world and-”

“You know Allura too?” Keith sounded surprised to hear that.

His surprise made Lance chuckle. “Yeah. Allura is the goddess of the world and she used the giant clam to create the ocean. She cracked it open and water poured out everywhere.”

“Huh, we don’t have that story.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

***

Lance continued to talk about constellations and Keith was… Well he was a little conflicted. This date thing was a friend date thing. Not really meant to be anything other than showing him what a date is like since Lance wanted to go on one. He wondered if Lance would use these dating techniques would translate well to selkie dating? Though if Lance didn’t know what dating was then maybe he wouldn’t know what dating was?

He sighed and looked up at the stars. Lance was still talking about the constellations. He was practically gushing about them. He was still talking about Allura and how to Selkies she was a goddess of the ocean and all the cool things she did.

“And that’s where mermaids came from.” Said Lance happily.

“Huh, alright.”

“Yeah.” Lance rolled onto his stomach and smiled at him. “It’s pretty cool, right?”

“Yeah. It is.” He looked over at Lance and saw how happy and excited he was. The selkie just looked so happy and excited to be with him.Which made Keith feel a little guilty. He liked Lance well enough, but Lance was his familiar. It felt weird to him to feel anything other than friendship towards him. 

Sure he knew that some wicche’s had romantic relations with their familiar, but they were all people that had familiars that were like Lance. As in they had intelligence that was the same and or higher than that of a normal human. He knew that Shiro and Adam were a couple, but he wasn’t so sure about the dynamics of their relationships.

He didn’t want Lance to feel like he had to be in a romantic relationship with him. He might feel that way if he tried anything with him. Keith didn’t like the power dynamic that existed between a wicche and their familiar when the familiar was this intelligent. 

“So… this is what a human date is like.” Said Keith.

Lance grinned. “Yeah. I like it. I like it a lot. It’s a lot less stressful than courting. I have to collect lots of pretty things for my mate.”

“So you’ve done it before?”

Lance looked embarrassed and quickly looked away from Keith. “When I was younger… There was this pretty selkie and I started gathering things to give her… But just when breeding season started another selkie quickly moved in and well… They were the first couple to have a pup that year…”

“Oh… I’m sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it.” Said Lance. “Like, if I courted her then I might not have met you.”

“True…”

“And I like being your familiar.” Said Lance as he leaned in a little closer to him. “Out of all the wicche’s in the world, I’m glad I got to be with you.”

Did Lance know how perfect he looked right now? Being illuminated by the enchanting and whimsical lighting? He looked more supernatural and beautiful than usual. He blushed at the thought. 

“I… I’m glad that I could be with you too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Lance smiled and leaned in closer. Keith thought that Lance was going to kiss him, but instead, the selkie nuzzled his cheek and neck while making very soft seal noises. It was a little surprising, but it left Keith feeling a little unsatisfied. He didn’t know why.

“Dates are nice.” Said Lance happily. “Can we do this more often?”

“More friend dates?” Asked Keith. “Sure.”

Lance frowned a little at that wording. “So, what’s the difference between this and a normal date?”

“Well… There’s no kissing…”

“... And if I want to kiss you?”

Keith could feel his face heating up. “... You want to kiss me?”

“W-well yeah?” Confessed Lance. “I’ve been trying to figure out how best to try and court you for the past few weeks. It’s hard to tell what you like when you only have practical things around your home.”

“Oh…”

“So can I kiss you?”

“O-only if you want to…”

Lance smiled at him and gently kissed Keith. Keith reciprocated the kiss and pulled his lover close. Lance still smelled a little fishy, but that was just him. He was a selkie after all.


	20. Love talk

Keith was very, very torn about his sudden relationship with Lance. On one hand he was happy about kissing Lance, but on the other hand, he kissed Lance. Lance was his familiar, but he loved him? Maybe? He didn’t know. He was so confused. He needed to talk to Shiro about this. Which was why he was back in Shiro’s tower.

Shiro was more than happy to talk to Keith, he always was. Adam was able to change into human form now, but he looked about ten and had to wear a very large robe. Lance was more than happy to entertain the phoenix. 

“Wow, you’re so small.” Mused Lance.

“Yeah, but at least I can walk around now.” Said Adam. “Makes it easier to grab my stuff… And I can sleep next to Shiro again…”

“Awwww, that’s cute.”

As the two talked, Keith quietly talked to Shiro. The older wicche seemed to notice that there was something going on with him and took him over to his desk while he left the familiars to play by the fire. Once they were a safe distance away, Shiro confronted him.

“So what’s going on?”

“... I think Lance and I are dating?”

“... You think?”

“Yes.”

Shiro looked confused. “How can you not know?”

“Well… We kind of went on a date and we kissed and… I really don’t know what to do.” Muttered Keith. “I honestly kind of thought I’d spend the rest of my life in my house with my familiar and kind of die alone…”

“That’s a little morbid.”

“Yeah, but I can’t help it.” Said Keith. “Lance is like… My ward? I’m meant to take care of him… I know he’s smart enough to make his own decisions but I still feel weird about this… How did you and Adam…”

“Fall in love?”

“Yeah…”

Shiro chuckled and looked over at the child that was slapping Lance’s hand away from his metal bowl. “Well, it was just over time. We just happened to click. Granted, I did feel like you do now at the time. I was very unsure about my feelings and worried that I might have been taking advantage of him but… Well, Adam said that if he wanted to leave me he just would, and I believe him.”

“I guess… Lance has said the same thing too, but I… It still feels a little weird to me.”

“Do you like him?”

“Well yeah…”

“And you liked kissing him?”

“... Yes. But I don’t think I should have… That’s the problem.”

Shiro shrugged. “You like him, so just go with it. He likes you and you like him, right? What’s the worst that can happen? He’ll just leave you if he really thinks that you’re not worth his time.”

“Thanks… I think…”

The older wicche sighed and put his hand on his shoulder. “Look, just have fun. You two like each other enough, right? You two might love each other.”

“Well I… I think I might…” Muttered Keith. “Maybe… It will just take a while. Maybe.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah…”

“So how long until you and Adam… You know… went all the way?”

“...” Shiro’s face went bright red at that comment. “H-he was an adult!”

“I never said he wasn’t?”

“... A-anyway… It took a few months before we were intimate in that kind of way. Why? Have you and Lance?”

Now it was Keith’s turn to go bright red. “N-no! We haven’t I just… Never been in any kind of relationship before…”

Shiro frowned a little. “But I thought that-”

“Spin the bottle doesn’t count Shiro… I didn’t want to kiss any of those people anyway, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to kiss me. Anyway, I’m just not sure… If things go wrong then I’ll be alone… I won’t even have a familiar… And you know the stigma around wicche’s that don’t have a familiar...”

“You never know unless you give it a try.” Said Shiro calmly. “Why not just give it a go?”

“... I just don’t want to take advantage of him.”

“You won’t be. Pretty sure he would bite you if you tried anything.”

“He probably would.” Keith looked over at Lance. Lance was back to looking like a seal and on his back, slapping his belly. Adam was laying next to him and doing the same. It seemed like Lance was introducing Adam to the wonders of slap therapy. Though Adam looked a little confused by it. “I… I just wanted some advice on what to do.”

Shiro nodded. “Yeah, I get it. Just take a moment to think about what you want. I’m sure Lance will be happy with what you want to do either way, but you have to talk to him soon. The longer you prolong all this, the worse it could end up. Especially if Lance really wants to be with you and you’re still on the fence.”

“I know… I know...”

***

Later that evening the two of them were back at their house. Keith was doing a bit of cleaning, while thinking if he and Lance should start sharing a bed. He didn’t know if he needed to figure out something where there would be a sandy spot for him or not. He didn’t know.

Suddenly Lance had his arms wrapped around him and was resting his chin on his shoulder. “... Are you okay? You seem a little off?”

“Oh um… Just thinking about sleeping arrangements and stuff now.” Said Keith. “Like, since we are together and stuff then we should sleep in the same bed or something…”

Lance’s eyes lit up. “Really? You want to sleep together?”

“Yeah?”

Lance grinned and before Keith knew it, Lance was up the ladder in the small loft. They sat on the bed and looked down at him. He grinned at him and waved. “Man, it’s really high up here. It’s really weird you know? Being so high up, but not as high as Shiro’s tower. Why does he have to live that high up anyway?”

Keith shrugged. “The view?”

“Maybe?” Lance flopped back onto the bed and made some happy seal sounds.

Keith rolled his eyes and continued to sweep up the floor. “So… Do you like hanging out with Adam?”

“Yeah. I like kids.” Lance started to happily slap on his tummy. “Adam’s still as snarky as ever. Kind of nice he isn’t screeching anymore. He was very loud.”

“Yeah, Adam is quite a loud bird when he wants to be.” Mused Keith as he continued to sweep the dirt and dust out of the door. 

The air outside was starting to get a little chilly. The seasons were starting to change. Was Lance going to be okay in winter? Would he need to eat more food to get fat for the Winter? He wasn’t 100% sure how that worked. He might need to talk to Lance and ask him if he should start feeding him some tallow and lard with his food? He didn’t want Lance to get too cold.

“Are you okay?” Asked Lance.

“Hmm?”

“You look like you’re thinking hard about something. What’s up?”

“It’s getting cold.” Said Keith. “You’re going to need to either eat more food or start wearing clothes to stay warm.”

Lance huffed a little at that. “Eh, maybe… But I’ll be fine. Really… I’ll just stay in my seal form during winter. I’ll stay nice and toasty.”

“If that’s what you want to do then go ahead.” Said Keith. “... I still want to get you a cloak or something for Winter. Just in case. I don’t want you to get sick or anything.”

“Aw, that’s sweet.” Cooed Lance. “I’d appreciate it… I can get you something too if you like?”

“You don’t have to…”

“Nope! I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna get you something nice!” Declared Lance. “I have no idea what I’m going to get you, but I will get it for you!”

“As you wish.” Keith continued to sweep.

***

When it came to sleeping together in the same bed, Lance was very happy about everything, but Keith seemed nervous. Lance didn’t really understand this. They were dating now, right? So sharing a bed shouldn’t be a problem? He didn’t understand why Keith was sleeping right on the edge of the bed as far away from him as possible.

“Keith?”

“Hmm?”

“Can you move a little closer to me?” Asked Lance quietly. “Do I smell or something?”

“No.” Keith rolled over and looked over to Lance. “I just… I haven’t been close to anyone like this before… It almost feels wrong.”

Hearing that made Lance feel sad. He didn’t want to make Keith uncomfortable. “Oh… Sorry… I can go back to sleeping in my bed on the ground floor.”

“No, it’s fine.” Keith moved closer to him and reached over to pull Lance closer, which Lance quietly loved. “I’m just not used to this… I don’t get close to people like this. So it might take awhile for me to…”

“It’s okay.” Said Lance quietly. He cuddled Keith and gently kissed his face and neck. “I love you Keith. I really do. You take all the time you need. I’ll be here for you. I promise. I won’t abandon you. I swear.”

“I know. Thank you.” Keith gently hugged him. Lance smiled and held him as close. Sleeping next to Keith felt warm. He loved Keith so much.


	21. Pearls and daggers

The relationship between Lance and Keith was slowly starting to develop into something more bountiful. Keith had warmed up to the idea of Lance being his boyfriend and possible lover while continuing their professional relationship as wicche and familiar. It was a little awkward for the both of them for a while, but they were working on it.

Thankfully with the cold weather rolling in, Keith was quite happy to cuddle up to Lance in bed. Apparently being such a chunky seal made him the perfect hot water bottle. Lance was very pleased by this turn of events too.

One thing that Lance was very surprised by though, was snow. He really, really loved it. The first day that snow happened to fall on the house, Lance almost lost his mind. He happily ran out and started sliding around. He ended up drifting and slid straight into the river. Thankfully he seemed very happy about this and swam around a little. It was kind of sweet.

Keith just went about collecting firewood while Lance enjoyed cold weather. It was kind of nice. It all seemed rather domestic to him and Keith really liked it. There was something nice about living like this.

When it got too cold, or at least when Keith got too cold, they would go back inside and Keith would light a fire. Most of the time they would sit side by side with Keith draping a blanket over his shoulders. Lance would usually sit next to him in his seal form, but sometimes he would sit by him in his human form.

On this particular evening, Lance was in his human for and spread his seal skin over his legs like a blanket. He looked like he was trying to flatten out the wrinkles in the skin. It was very interesting just to see it all flattened out like that.

“What are you doing?” Asked Keith.

“Just making sure it’s all pretty and stuff.” Said Lance as he ran his fingers over the muzzle. “Gotta do that every once in a while.”

“I see… Hey Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“Just wondering, but is it your skin that’s magic or you yourself?”

Lance gave him a confused look. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you can pull your seal skin on and off.” Said Keith. “Is it the skin that turns you into a seal or is it you that makes the skin stick to you and become a seal? I was just wondering…”

Lance looked down at his skin and then at Keith. “Did you want to try it on? See if you can become a seal?”

Keith could feel his face heating up in embarrassment. “Well… I’m just curious. I still don’t know too much about selkies…”

The selkie nodded and looked down at the seal skin before he held it up to Keith. “Here. Try it on.”

Keith was a little shocked. “Seriously? You’re giving me your skin?”

“It’s only temporary.” Said Lance. “Besides, I trust you. I know you won’t just set it on fire and make me stay with you forever. You’re a good person. I love you. I trust you completely.”

He was touched by this. Keith wasn’t very sure what to do to make it stick to his own skin. He thought for a bit and thought it might be logical to have skin contact with the seal skin. So with much reluctance, Keith removed his jumper, tunic, and long sleeved shirt and attempted to put the skin on.

“... I feel like an idiot.” 

Lance chuckled. “Well, you don’t look very smart either.”

The skin didn’t adhere to Keith’s skin at all. It just hung off his body like any normal animal skin. Keith quickly gave it back and pulled his much warmer clothes back on. “I think you are magical… You do cry pearls too after all.”

“Very true… Oh! That reminds me!” Lance happily got up, tied his seal skin around himself, and headed over to the sandy patch that was once his bed and dug around a little. After a few seconds, Lance took out a box and happily walked over to Keith, handing it to him. “Here. For you.”

Keith took the box and looked it over. “... For me?”

He nodded. “Yeah. When I went to town a few weeks ago to do some things, I talked to Pidge to see if I could get some more salt. There was this really pretty box and she helped me with some other stuff… Anyway, I hope you like it.”

“It’s a very nice box.” Said Keith as he brushed some of the sand off of it.

“Silly. There is something inside it.” 

Keith raised an eyebrow and opened the box. Inside was a leather pouch and something that looked like a piece of wonky metal. Lance quickly took the metal out of the box, looking slightly embarrassed.

“Sorry. I forgot I left that in there…”

“What is it?”

“That practice dagger you let me keep.” Said Lance quietly. “I liked it and I… Well I like it.”

Keith felt touched. “Really? I can make you a much better dagger if you want?”

Lance shook his head. “No. I like this one. It might not be very practical, but it is special to me because you gave it to me and let me keep it… Anyway, open your gift. I was working on it for a while before we got together officially.”

Keith picked up the pouch. It looked like a coin pouch. He gave it a little shake and he heard a slight clatter and jingle. It didn’t sound like coins. Keith opened it up and tipped it out into his hand. Out spilled a necklace made from pearls. Bright pink, almost red pearls. Keith was stunned.

Lance grinned at him. “Do you like it? I made the pearls myself.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I talked to Pidge a little and she said if I could get the pearls she would thread them for me, so I made myself cry.”

“You made yourself cry?” Asked Keith. “You should do that Lance. These pearls are yours.”

Lance shook his head and took the necklace out of Keith’s hands. “Nope. These are yours. The colour of the pearls change due to the reason why we cried. When our pearls are pink and red it means love. The more intense the red is the more intense our love is.” Lance put the necklace around Keith’s neck and smiled lovingly at him. “These pearls represent how much I love you. It’s a personal gift that I wanted to give you.”

Keith felt his face just completely burning with embarrassment. This just felt so deeply personal he didn’t really know if he had the words to describe how to express his feelings for Lance at that moment. So instead, he reached out and kissed Lance softly on the lips.

The selkie melted into the kiss and happily kissed back. Keith was still a little shy about PDA, but he was getting better. He was getting used to the slightly fishy smell and or taste that more often than not comes with kissing Lance. That was fine though. Lance was worth it. He was lucky he didn’t have a fish allergy. That could have been bad.

They pulled away slightly, pressing their foreheads together. They stared deeply into each other’s eyes. When Keith looked into Lance’s eyes he saw the vast and endless ocean. When Lance looked into Keith’s, he saw the universe.

“Thank you.” Said Keith quietly. “For choosing me.”

“I’d choose you everytime for a thousand lifetimes and then a thousand more.” Said Lance as he moved in for another kiss.


End file.
